


double vision

by crimson_adder



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Detective Sasuke, Eyepatch of Power, Gen, Loosey-Goosey Multiverse Theory, No Rules Just Right, Rinnegan, Uchiha Sasuke-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-10-13 18:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20587379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimson_adder/pseuds/crimson_adder
Summary: A few months after Sasuke turns seven, he starts seeing double.He doesn’t really know how to bring up the fact that if he tries to look at cousin Shisui from the corner of his left eye, he can’t see him at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *squints* this is.... not what i'm supposed to be doing with my time

A few months after Sasuke turns seven, he starts seeing double. Only once every so often, but still, sometimes his vision blurs and he gets dizzy, a headache sharp behind his eyes.

He wants to tell Brother, but he’s always busy these days. Whenever Sasuke gets a chance to spend time with him, his weird double vision drops by the wayside in favor of shuriken training and dango. He doesn’t want to tell Father, because he might be disappointed in him, might take it back and say he’s no longer worthy of being his son. He won’t tell Mother because she would fuss and fret and tell Father, and then he’d be back to square one, and also Mother will treat him like a baby.

Really it’s not that bad, so he doesn’t mention it, and tries not to show it, and then he doesn’t know how to bring up the fact that if he tries to look at cousin Shisui from the corner of his left eye, he can’t see him at all.

So he doesn’t bring it up.

Brother notices anyway. 

One day Shisui meets them at the training grounds and Sasuke jumps sky high. They’re practicing shuriken techniques, and Sasuke might not have the instincts of a killer yet, but he has the instincts of a little boy and sharp things in his hands, and he hurls them immediately at a threat he can feel but not see. If Shisui wasn’t as fast as he is, he could very well have been in trouble.

“Don’t sneak up on me!” Sasuke howls, feeling his face turn red in embarrassment.

Shisui puts his hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t sneaking, I promise. You gotta work on your reflexes, baby boy,” he says, quick stepping forward to ruffle Sasuke’s hair. “If you wanna be a good ninja like big brother, you can’t go jumping at thin air.”

Sasuke pushes his hand off with a huff, ears burning.

“Sasuke, didn’t you see Shisui waving?” asks Brother, his narrow forehead creasing. His dark eyes are unwavering as he frowns down at Sasuke.

Sasuke’s shoulders stiffen and he can’t stop it. “I— I did! It just… he surprised me!” He rubs his eye like he can clear out some grit, but it only makes his vision pop with green and yellow sparkles and nothing changes when he opens it back up.

“Do you have something in your eye? Let me see.” Brother doesn’t give him a chance to deny it, crouching down in front of Sasuke and peeling his hand away from his face. His eyes flick Sharingan red and Sasuke stiffens all over again. Brother’s Sharingan is different— or, no it’s not, it’s the same as always. He just thought it was different for a moment.

Brother’s pale thumb rests on his cheekbone, gently pulling the soft skin down, peering into his eye with a look on concentration. Sasuke’s eye stings from how much he’s been rubbing it recently, and the bared flesh feels raw.

“It doesn’t look like there’s anything in there. Can you see okay?” Brother asks, releasing his hold and his Sharingan at the same time. His thumb coasts tenderly along the slope of Sasuke’s cheek, caressing now instead of capturing.

Sasuke blinks rapidly. He can see Brother just fine, not blurred or out of focus but Shisui looks like half a ghost, like he can see all the way through him, for all that he’s standing right there watching in concern. “Yeah, it’s fine. I got it out,” he lies.

____________

A week later Sasuke runs home from the Academy and collapses in the street just outside Uncle Teyaki’s senbei shop.

He wakes up two days later screaming and clawing at his eyes, and nothing Mother can do will calm him down until he cries himself back to sleep in her arms. Father sits at his bedside in between clan meetings and hushed conversations, and they both wait impatiently for Itachi to get back from his most recent mission.

Sasuke spends almost a week in bed, nightmares every night, eyes clenched shut every time he wakes. He lets Mother hold him close and rock him gently, lets Father place a broad hand on his head, smoothing down sweaty hair and tangled cowlicks, but he refuses to open his eyes to look at either of them. 

The clan medic-nin comes to check on him one day when he’s long since fallen into shivering dreams, and carefully peels open his eyes to check on them, soothing chakra keeping him sedated. His right eye is crisp red of an awakened Sharingan, a single tomoe spiraling out of control even in unconsciousness, but the left is the cloudy uneven texture of a burst blood vessel.

When Itachi returns, Sasuke has been navigating the house with his eyes closed for two whole days, but he can’t restrain himself from opening his eyes and seeking his brother out. He starts crying all over again at the sight of Brother peering down at him, not half see-through like Mother and Father and Shisui and all those strange horrifying bodies he saw all over the compound, but whole and present and even though his expression doesn’t quite line up, he’s there and that’s all that counts.

Medically, there’s nothing wrong with his eye. Sasuke goes back to the Academy, and the world makes sense. He comes home to the compound, and everything is off kilter.

Sasuke feels like he’s being haunted, always half-seeing the people around him, always turning his head to see if what he hears matches up with what his eyes tell him. 

Sasuke does not go into the dojo any more. He doesn’t want to step in the blood.

He closes his eyes whenever he is home. Brother starts guiding his hands to the table during dinner, quietly murmuring the location of the rice, of his tea, of his chopsticks, so Sasuke can eat dinner without knocking things over. He rearranges the furniture so the foot paths are straighter, fewer sharp corners sticking out into empty air, then leads Sasuke through them carefully, holding his hands and describing the layout as they move.

____________

Father allows him one week of that before he puts his foot down.

“Sasuke, you cannot be a ninja if you behave so childishly. This nonsense will stop now. Your brother won’t always be there to hold your hand.”

Brother, in fact, is out of the house, a meeting with his commanding officers taking him away for several hours. Sasuke is making tea, because Itachi told him it was good training for his spatial awareness: finding the tea leaves, boiling water, arranging the cups without dropping anything off the edge of the table. Pouring is the hardest part, where his fingers have to hold the tea cup to know where it is, while his other hand hovers in mid air with the pot. His fingers are blistered from one too many mispours. 

Sasuke flinches at the reprimand, hot water slopping out of the teapot, and opens his eyes to see that once again he’s scattered loose leaves all over the counter on the way to steep. He looks up at Father before he can stop himself, and flinches again away from the sight. This time the water spills onto his hands and he drops the teapot, sending it shattering across the floor and the rest of the hot water splashing up onto his legs. He shrieks in pain and clenches his eyes shut again. Father darts across the room, sweeping Sasuke up into his arms, and quick steps to the hospital as the burns set in.

“Do you see, Sasuke?” Father asks after the medic-nins have retreated, salves and bandages applied in swaths. Chakra healing was enough to lessen the burns, but Sasuke’s skin is red and tight. “This is not sustainable. Sasuke, look at me,” he snaps.

Sasuke tries to open just his right eye. He can’t keep his left eye shut, the eyelid slits open and his face contorts under the strain. He lifts one bandaged hand and holds his left eye shut, and only then does he look at his father.

“Yes, father,” he mutters, chastened and scared, his adrenalin gone in the wake of the medic-nin.

“You are an Uchiha,” his father continues, arms crossed. “Your eyes will be your greatest weapon. If you continue on like this, you will shame your clan, and the legacy of the Uchiha dōjutsu.”

“Yes, father,” says Sasuke.

____________

Trying to keep his eyes open is driving Sasuke insane. He jumps at everything, regardless of which side it approaches him from, because he no longer trusts either eye. He’s only seven, but he feels like the exhaustion of constantly being on guard will drive him into an early grave. His dreams are still strange and frightening, and when he looks at Itachi, it’s a toss-up on whether his expressions are aligned in casual blankness, or a disorienting mix of a gentle smile and a cold glare.

When Father is out of the house, Mother will let Sasuke close his eyes, and he can feel the tension in his body slip away as she guides him through the routines Itachi established. She tells him quietly about how sometimes ninja are forced to fight at a disadvantage, in the dark, or in a smoke screen, and that training his other senses to compensate is not a shameful waste of time. Sasuke doesn’t like being treated like a baby, but so long as it’s for training, he doesn’t mind as much. His mother’s hands are strong as they hold his, her weapon calluses worn soft from years of motherhood, but the steady assurance of them never fading. 

It’s Itachi who comes up with the idea. The other Uchiha wouldn’t even think of it, really. They’re training again, kunai practice in the woods, when Izumi stops in to deliver a message for Itachi from the clan Elders. Sasuke’s more accurate with shuriken, but he’s been practicing his kunai throws and has gotten a lot faster with them. Brother has to throw his own knives to knock Sasuke’s off course when he throws them instinctively at the ghost-threat.

Sasuke is gulping down sobs and well on his way to hyperventilating as Izumi tries to assure him that she’s not hurt. Brother frowns, eyes calculating, and then kneels down and tapes Sasuke’s left eye shut. It surprises Sasuke into swallowing hard, his breath stuttering back into a more reasonable pattern, and he stares at Itachi with one wide, dark eye.

“You’ll have to practice a lot more to compensate, little brother, but I know a ninja who fights with only one eye most of the time,” Brother says, his thumb pressing down the edges of the tape into Sasuke’s soft cheek. “Aiming with one eye is hard, and you’ll have to work on your hearing and chakra sensing to compensate for your eyesight, but it is possible. Is that better?”

Sasuke nods, a little stunned. He lets Izumi walk him back to his house, while Brother goes to the clan meeting, and she walks on his right side and doesn’t comment on his perfectly functional left eye hidden behind the tape.

His father shakes his head in disgust when he sees Sasuke’s makeshift eyepatch, but Sasuke is obeying the letter of his commands, at least, and Mother won’t let him scold Sasuke for it.

Sasuke wears his eyepatch to his classes at the Academy too, because Brother is right, it takes a lot more adjustment than he expected to navigate the world with only one eye. Taijutsu is harder, shuriken throwing is harder, even walking is harder when he can’t judge the distance between himself and any obstacles. He walks into the classroom door twice on the first day. 

Iruka-sensei pulls him aside after class. 

“Is everything okay at home, Sasuke-kun?” he says, face crinkled up in concern.

Sasuke nods, his face heating up. He’s never actually tried to explain what’s happening, he’s only ever avoided people’s questions and his family adjusted around him. He doesn’t want Iruka-sensei getting the wrong idea, but how do you say _my left eye can’t see my family_ without getting even more weird looks than the eyepatch?

He touches his taped up eye. “I got something in it, and it hurts. Big Brother put this on so I wouldn’t hurt it more.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” asks Iruka-sensei. He moves like he wants to touch Sasuke’s eye too, but his hand halts in midair.

“No, I already did. Brother says I should practice my chakra sensing in the meantime.”

Iruka-sensei looks intrigued. “We don’t usually practice chakra sensing until your final few years at the Academy. How good is your sensing now?”

Sasuke flushes. “It’s not… it’s okay.” He knows Itachi’s chakra patterns, and he can recognize Mother’s and Father’s if he concentrates, but he’s only just started sensing other clan members, and he’s terrible at sensing shinobi outside the clan. 

“Do you know Kanchi no Jutsu? It’s a technique to help you focus your chakra sensing. It will help you learn how to read chakra signatures even without the jutsu, in time,” says Iruka-sensei.

Sasuke didn’t even know there was a technique for that. He just sort of thought you concentrated hard and then eventually you were a sensor type. 

Iruka-senesi laughs at the expression on his face. “I can teach it to you. We could work on it together after class, if you want. Do you want me to ask your parents?”

“No! It’s fine, I can tell them!” says Sasuke, eagerness bright on his cheeks. If he says he’s learning special techniques from his teachers, his father won’t be mad about him staying late. Besides, he stays late in the training grounds almost every day for shuriken training anyway.

Iruka-sensei watches him closely as the weeks go by and Sasuke keeps his eye taped shut, but he doesn’t ask again, and Sasuke doesn’t provide any explanations. Eventually Mother gets him a proper eyepatch instead of tape and he switches to that smoothly, ignoring all questioning glances as if they don’t exist, like a true Uchiha.

Besides, he’s not the weirdest shinobi out there. There’s one chūnin he’s seen who has both eyes covered. And all the jōnin are weird, Brother says so.

____________

Sasuke comes to read Itachi’s chakra signature as a camp fire, a safe haven in the dark of the woods. Mother’s is like a handheld sparkler, bright and popping and fierce, and Father’s is a hearth fire, steady and low burning and constant. Iruka-sensei’s chakra feels like the lapping of the shallows in the lake, warmed from the sun, and bright crystal clear. Sasuke’s better at sensing when he does the hand-seals for Kanchi no Jutsu, but his range is slowly expanding, so he can walk through the compound and not get startled when people approach him from his blindside.

When Sasuke can sense his classmates without making the hand-seals, can tell where they are on the Academy training grounds without opening his eye, Iruka-sensei starts teaching him how to channel chakra to his ears, so he can listen for an opponent’s attack and anticipate them. Then he teaches him about natural energy, and how there are more energies to the world than just physical and spiritual. Everything has energy, from the flowing of the Naka river, and the trees turning their leaves to the sun, and the littlest animals in the undergrowth.

He relearns how to aim his shuriken, learns how to anticipate fists and feet coming at him from the left, learns how to judge distances, and finally, thankfully, stops running into open doors. 

Itachi has been going on fewer missions out of the village these days, after almost a year of non-stop travelling with breaks few and far between. He spends more time with Sasuke, turning him down a little less often, though he is still kept busy with his job and his role as clan heir. Sasuke runs into his fingers a little too hard a couple times while adjusting to his depth perception, but it certainly doesn’t stop him poking Sasuke in the forehead at every opportunity. It’s good for training, he says.

Brother makes him take his eyepatch off for training sometimes when it’s just the two of them, when he’s sure they’re alone and won’t be disturbed. Sometimes he blindfolds Sasuke completely, and trains him in complete darkness, using only his sense of balance, of hearing, and his slowly burgeoning chakra sensing. 

Everyone else gets used to Sasuke’s one-eyed techniques, and their gazes don’t catch on his eyepatch quite so often.

His mother sits him down one day and fusses with his unruly hair, combing his middle part away so his bangs hang heavier over his left eye. It looks funny, and it makes his scalp tingle, with all his hair brushed the wrong way, but it looks less out of place to have hair over his eyepatch, than an eyepatch on his otherwise untouched face. Even though his hair is not technically in his eyes, he still has to learn not to flick his head to toss his bangs back when he feels them tickling his cheek. He gives himself a crick in the neck for a week before he learns better.

____________

Sasuke has overheard his brother and his father fighting a lot more since he started training his other senses. When they fight it’s nothing like a ninja battle, instead it’s all cold words and tense silences, and shoji snapping shut. They fought when Itachi left ANBU, and when he refused a position on the Konoha Military Police Force, and when he has missions out of the village that Father doesn’t approve of. They fight about the Hokage, and someone named Shimura, and Brother tells Father sharply to remember his oaths, and Father tells Brother that he does the clan a disservice to think so lowly of them. They fight after Sasuke refuses to take his eyepatch off in front of the clan Elders on his tenth birthday, Itachi stepping between Sasuke’s downcast eye and Father’s harsh words.

For all that they fight, Father is still proud of Brother, always and best, and Sasuke scrapes along behind seeking his own recognition. He doesn’t graduate early, he hasn’t managed to activate his Sharingan again (he doesn’t even remember activating it in the first place), and he still peers out at the world with only one eye, which Father has acknowledged, but will never really accept.

____________

Sasuke graduates top of the class, and no one has asked about his eyepatch in almost a year, when he meets his jōnin-sensei.

“What’d you do to your eye?” sensei asks, like his face isn’t almost completely covered himself.

Sakura gasps a little more dramatically than the question warrants, and Naruto whips his head around to stare at Sasuke like he’s been waiting for this answer for years. 

Sasuke scoffs, because he’s twelve. “What’d you do to _yours?_”

“Hm. That’s fair,” Kakashi-sensei says, eye curving in a bland smile. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

____________

He surprises Kakashi twice that he can tell during the test. The first is their brief hand-to-hand combat, Kakashi’s strikes at his blindside not getting him the easy hits he tried to take advantage of. The second is when Sasuke senses his chakra underneath the earth, cold and humming like sticking your finger in an electrical socket, and hops away in time to avoid the Doton jutsu.

He gets hit a moment later, sensing movement but not able to move fast enough to get away from it, and ends up on the ground anyway, forty feet into the trees and head first in a bush. He’s picking twigs out of his bangs when Sakura finds him, trembling from her own run in with Kakashi-sensei, and they work their way back to the training field where Naruto has just been tied to the log. 

Naruto looks longingly at their bento, and eyes Sasuke with almost as much interest.

“Hey, hey, what _did_ happen to your eye though, huh, Sasuke?” he asks, feet dancing on the dirt, as though without his body weight to hold them down they plan to take off on their own.

Sasuke stuffs onigiri into his big dumb mouth just to shut him up, and then looks over his shoulder to check if Kakashi-sensei’s anywhere near by. His range has gotten better, he can sense pretty well almost 50 feet around him on all sides without using Kanchi. For now he can’t feel Kakashi-sensei’s in that area, and he doesn’t see him anywhere.

He feeds Naruto more rice when it looks like he’s done choking on the first mouthful, and says “We’ll all need our strength if we’re going to take him on this afternoon, so shut up and eat, dumbass.”

Sakura blinks in realization. “Oh, of course! If we work together, we can cover each other’s blind spots!”

There is a long pause.

Sakura goes dead white and Naruto snorts rice out his nose. Sasuke rolls his eyes and checks again for Kakashi-sensei. 

Sakura covers her blunder with rage and starts force feeding Naruto too, and then Kakashi-sensei is coming, and _fast_, so fast that Sasuke drops his bento to get into a defensive position. He hasn’t even settled into the pose before the leaves are swirling and Kakashi is leaning over all of them with a look of doom visible even through his mask.

“Aren’t you all full of surprises?” asks their terrifying jōnin-sensei, and then his eye winks up into a grin and he passes them all, surprising them right back and leaving them windswept and a little breathless with fear.

They leave Naruto tied to the post, bento just out of reach, so he is properly motivated to untie himself.

____________

Father doesn’t look particularly pleased to hear his jōnin-sensei is Hatake Kakashi. As a matter of fact, he turns to the side and spits on the floor when Sasuke announces who his new commander is, and Mother shouts in affront. Neither of them will explain why Father is so angry.

He and Itachi don’t fight this time, but Itachi does make a point of telling Sasuke what a strong shinobi Hatake-san is, and how proud he is of Sasuke passing his test. “He’s never passed a genin team before,” he says, just loud enough to carry to the other room. “You must have impressed him greatly with your teammates. If you work hard, he has a lot to teach you.”

“He only has one eye,” Sasuke mutters, trying not to let his voice carry. “He’s still strong?”

Brother smiles, his eyes soft and tender and proud. “One of the strongest in Konoha. But don’t be fooled by what you see. You’re not the only one with secrets,” he says, poking Sasuke in the forehead, like a jerk.

____________

Sasuke’s one-eyed jōnin-sensei has two eyes, actually, and one of them is a Sharingan. He uses it with all the ease of a natural born Uchiha, and Sasuke finds himself touching his eyepatch without thinking about it as he and Sakura and Naruto watch their sensei fight. He pulls his hand away when Naruto turns to look at him instead.

Kakashi-sensei almost finishes off the missing-nin, but he’s thwarted by the boy in the mask, senbon flashing out and diverting his attack. The two of them are gone before Team 7 can blink, and then the genin turn on their terrible client, while Kakashi-sensei dusts his hands off and eyes them all speculatively.

Their terrible client takes them to his home, introduces them to his nice daughter and his terrible grandchild, and sits them all down for dinner. Kakashi-sensei stops them as they start to dig in and says “Zabuza isn’t dead. He’ll be coming back as soon as he recovers, so you three will be training in shifts, one of you with me watching Tazuna-san always. We need to be ready.”

Sakura goes a little pale. “That boy in the mask, wasn’t he a hunter-nin? I thought they track down missing-nin.”

“They do,” Kakashi-sensei nods, “but he wasn’t. He was impersonating a hunter-nin. He might very well be as talented as one, his attacks were strong enough to be, but he’s clearly on Zabuza’s side. He’ll be working on getting Zabuza back to full health, so my cute little students will be working just as hard, am I right?”

They nod in unison, and scarf down their food together, nerves suddenly heightened as they consider going up against the missing-nin again.

This is the first time Sasuke has slept with another person in the room since he got his eyepatch, so he sleeps in it, even though it’s uncomfortable. He can feel Naruto’s intrusive stare, and Kakashi-sensei’s curious glances, but he lays down facing away from them and pretends they don’t exist.

____________

Sasuke hasn’t quite made it up the tree before his first shift on the bridge. He’s had some experience channeling chakra to his body parts, but his feet and his ears are very different things, and the chakra needed to sharpen his hearing is not nearly the same as the chakra needed to stick to trees.

Sakura got it on the first try, so Kakashi-sensei gives her specific tasks to accomplish. While Naruto is still on his back hissing like an upturned cockroach, she’s running up and down, touching branches in specific orders, seeing how fast she can reach certain heights, walking backwards and upside down, and trying to climb as many times before she has to take a break.

The bridge is quiet, even with all the men at work on it, the sounds drifting out across the open water and getting lost. Sasuke sits next to Kakashi-sensei and closes his eye to concentrate. Just because he’s not on a tree doesn’t mean he can’t practice channeling chakra. He focuses his on his ears, and listens to an argument between Tazuna and one of his workers who is too scared of Gato to continue. He doesn’t have to use chakra to hear Tazuna’s swearing.

He switches his focus to his tongue, opening his mouth and tasting the salt air, the sweat of the construction men, the faint copper taste of blood still lingering on Kakashi-sensei’s clothing from his fight with Zabuza. He channels his chakra to his hands, feels the tingling in his fingers. He puts his hands down on the concrete surface of the bridge, and tries to tell how much is too much, what the limit is before his hands are repelled. 

He opens his eye and makes the hand-seals for Kanchi, trying to match all the construction workers to their tiny, undeveloped chakra signatures. Even civilians have chakra, they just don’t use it, or can’t, but it’s a lot harder to distinguish them. Some of them are barely flickers, like a match up against the daylight. It doesn’t help at all that Kakashi-sensei is a crackling brand under the sensory technique, stronger and humming all the more vibrantly under his focused senses, and drowning out all the other tiny flares.

“Sense anyone?”

Sasuke doesn’t quite jump, but he does lose concentration, and the jutsu falls apart between his hands. He tries to make it look like he let it go of his own volition. He turns his head to meet Kakashi-sensei’s uncovered eye, and wonders at the fact that they’re both right-eye dominant. Sort of.

“No other shinobi within a 500 yard radius,” he says. He’s not sure how good of a range that is. Iruka-sensei has a pretty good range just concentrating, but neither of them have anything on an actual sensor-nin who could find specific people in a space the size of Konoha or bigger.

“You don’t meet many genin adept at chakra sensing. Did you start developing sensor techniques when you lost your eye?” asks Kakashi-sensei with a squint.

Sasuke huffs and tries to figure out if that’s a compliment. “I didn’t lose it.”

“Oh? Just set it aside for a moment, then?”

In a way that’s true. Sasuke takes his eyepatch off to sleep, and when Brother wants to train him. He can’t let it slack off, is Itachi’s reasoning, and keeping it functional could turn the tide in a fight when he least expects it. His left eye doesn’t adjust to light as easily, spending so much time in the dark, but it focuses and follows just as quick as his right eye. Still, it’s been a few months since one of those training sessions, and Sasuke hasn’t even looked at himself in the mirror with both eyes in years. 

He folds his arms over his chest and ignores the question. “What’d you do to get your eye? It’s a Sharingan and you’re not an Uchiha. I should report you to the Elders.”

Kakashi-sensei frowns, suddenly cross and cold, and then his face relaxes just as quick. He sighs ruefully. “Aah, I shoulda guessed. Your Elders already know, thanks. But don’t let me stop you, if you wanna go running to daddy.”

Sasuke flushes hot and bright at the tone in Kakashi-sensei’s voice, condescending and bordering on cruel. He ducks his head and turns away, letting his hair fall to shield his face. 

They sit in silence for a long stretch of time.

“It was a gift,” Kakashi-sensei says finally. “The Uchiha Elders don’t like it, but since I don’t exactly have a spare, I’m not about to hand it back.”

Sasuke doesn’t know who could have given him a Sharingan. Who does he know with only one eye? No one else in the clan, at least. What does Kakashi-sensei look like in his left eye? Sasuke has never been tempted to look before right now.

“Oh,” is all he says. “Okay.”

____________

Sasuke has two more days of tree climbing. One goes by slowly, and he spends it trying not to compare his progress to Sakura, who though short on stamina, is increasingly agile in the canopy while he plods along at the base of the tree, his kunai markings barely moving.

The second is a whirlwind of competition as Naruto comes back from his bridge shift raring to go and yelling the whole time. Sasuke gets swept up in the enthusiasm despite his best efforts. They’re both running full pelt up the bark, feet dipping in too deep, skidding over the surface, sheer momentum the only thing keeping them going. 

They reach the tops of the trees, and Sasuke is exhausted and pleased and irritated that Naruto caught up with him so quickly.

Naruto oversleeps the next morning, even though Kakashi-sensei said they were all on bridge duty that day, and the missing-nin shows up again.

____________

Sasuke awakens his Sharingan for the first time in years, tries his best to save his stupid idiot of a friend, and thinks he’s going to die.

____________

That night in Tazuna’s house, Sasuke shuts himself in the bathroom. He takes off his eyepatch and looks down at the sink, running the faucet like he’s brushing his teeth, gathering his courage to turn his gaze upwards.

He looks in the mirror.

His hair is different. He’s been parting his hair to one side like his mother showed him for long enough that the middle part from his childhood looks unfamiliar. Other than that he looks the same. The marks from the masked boy’s senbon ring his throat, none of the half-ghosting that happens when his vision doesn’t line up. It’s strangely reassuring, how precisely those marks coincide.

He blinks his Sharingan on, carefully channeling chakra to both eyes, and his vision sharpens and condenses into perfect understanding. He still sees two different versions of himself, but now they are distinct, not overlapping. They are each whole and unique, and they both look a little chakra fatigued. Two tomoe in his right eye, one in his left. That’s lucky, he’d hate to have his more developed Sharingan in his non-dominant eye.

He cuts the chakra to his eyes, thinks about putting his eyepatch back on, and instead maneuvers back into the room he shares with Naruto and Kakashi-sensei with both eyes shut, extending his senses to navigate the narrow hallway. Naruto is already asleep, his chakra a warm waft of summer breeze thrumming low and unconscious. Kakashi-sensei is still awake, crackling and popping in thought and movement.

His chakra stops moving when Sasuke pushes the door open. Sasuke can feel the weight of his gaze. His bedroll is four steps to the left of the door and ten steps into the room, angled with the head facing the window and the feet towards the door. Sasuke steps precisely, hearing the floorboards creak beneath his bare toes, Naruto’s steady breaths filling the silence. He stops on the board that makes a short high whine with upwards inflection, and drops onto his bedroll precisely, rolling himself up in his blankets and feigning sleep immediately.

“Huh,” he can hear from the other side of the room, an almost involuntary breath of air. Kakashi-sensei putters around for a few more moments, before he too retires to his bed with a sigh.

____________

Sasuke wakes up to Naruto’s morning breath an inch from his face, and punches upwards without opening his eyes. Naruto falls back howling and clutching his nose. Sasuke knows where his eyepatch is, tucked under his pillow, and he has it in his hand before he opens both his eyes.

Naruto is orange and writhing. Kakashi-sensei, who Sasuke did not realize was in the room, looks about the same too. He’s more ragged, according to Sasuke’s left eye, like he was injured worse somehow, the lines around his one visible eye deeper with exhaustion.

He’s staring directly back at Sasuke. He pushes up his forehead protector and captures one glimpse of Sasuke looking back, before Naruto bounces upright, and both Sasuke and Kakashi turn as one to hide away their secrets once again.

____________

“Kakashi-sensei said it could have gone worse,” Sasuke says a little awkwardly when he gets home, filthy and exhausted and sporting more new scars than anyone expected. Kakashi-sensei had tried to show Sakura the basics of medical-ninjutsu, but he was pretty garbage at it, so she couldn’t do much to heal Sasuke’s senbon wounds. The medic-nin at the hospital said they were too far healed not to leave scars by the time she got to them. “The Hokage changed the ranking from C to A, but at least nobody died.”

Father looks torn between cooly congratulating his son on his first successful A-rank mission, and cooly storming out of the Uchiha compound to hunt down Hatake Kakashi and kill him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’ALL, i am stoked you’re enjoying this so far. 
> 
> i have little to no clue about where this story is going between now and the end game, so we’re on this ride together.

There is a man standing behind Brother. 

They are squared off in the training grounds, Sasuke’s eyepatch set aside. Brother stands tall and relaxed, ready for Sasuke’s attack. But there is a man standing behind Brother, and Sasuke didn’t see him at all until he activated his Sharingan.

The man is looking at Itachi. He’s very tall and carrying an enormous sword.

“Sasuke, what are you looking at?”

Itachi looks over his shoulder. He looks directly at the man, Sasuke can almost see them make eye contact, but then Brother turns away and stares back at Sasuke, his forehead creased and his eyes narrow.

Sasuke’s gaze snaps to Brother. He can’t see the look on his own face, but to Itachi it is horribly reminiscent of the way he looked years and years ago when all this started, sickly pale, an insidious fear carved in around his eyes, trembling at things that no one else can see.

“Sasuke?”

When Brother moves forward, the man moves with him, his black and red cloak swaying gently. He doesn’t look at Sasuke, doesn’t pay any attention to him. Why would he, he has a Kiri headband just like Zabuza’s, what kind of missing-nin from Kiri pays attention to a Konoha genin? Why would he even be here?

“There’s—” Sasuke starts, and then cuts himself off. Brother can’t see the man. If Sasuke tells him about the man, what will he think? What will he do? 

Even after generations, the depths and limitations of the Sharingan have never been fully explored. Sasuke knows that somewhere there are records of everything the Uchiha clan has discovered about their bloodline, but he’s not allowed to look at them yet. He knows anyway that every generation demonstrates new techniques, new aberrations, there are too many variables to know everything about what is possible.

Is it a new hidden technique? Or is it driving him mad? He certainly feels like he’s mad, has felt like it for years. This is not the insanity he was expecting as a twelve year old just coming into his inheritance. 

Sasuke closes his eyes and tries to control his breathing. He cannot hear the man, can’t sense his chakra. The man does not exist. He is more of a ghost than Shisui ever was, even in Sasuke’s worst childhood nightmares.

“What did you see, little brother?” Itachi is just before Sasuke, crouched down like he did when Sasuke was just a kid, hand on his face and thumb pressed into the still-soft curve of his cheek. He strokes his skin and the tip of his thumb tickles against Sasuke’s eyelashes.

“A man,” Sasuke whispers, not opening his eyes despite his brother’s unspoken entreaty. “There’s a man behind you.”

“Do you know him?”

Sasuke shakes his head, careful not to dislodge Brother’s hand.

“Is he still there?”

Sasuke frowns. He doesn’t want to look again, but he will for Brother. He slits his eyes open, and sees the shadow of the man fall across Itachi’s face. “Yes. He… He’s in my left eye.”

This is the first time his left eye has seen something his right does not. Although, given how little he looks through his left eye, Sasuke has no idea how many ghosts he could be carrying with him.

“What is the man doing, Sasuke?”

“He’s just standing,” Sasuke shakes his head. “He’s standing there and he’s looking at you.”

“At me? Is he a shinobi?”

“Kiri. With a scratch.” Sasuke moves his own hand over his forehead to show the line where the man’s headband has been defaced. 

“Sasuke, I can’t see this man, I need you to tell me. Is he a threat?” asks Brother, his voice low like he doesn’t want to be overheard. If he is a threat, Itachi is ready.

“I don’t— I can’t sense him. I can’t hear him. He’s not doing anything. I don’t know. Brother, I don’t know if he’s real.”

Sasuke’s Sharingan flickers off and the man flickers with it. 

Brother makes the hand seals for Kanchi, and scans their surroundings. “I don’t sense him either.”

Sasuke looks at the ground and clenches his fists. “It’s not real.”

Itachi watches him for an endless moment, and then reaches out to pry Sasuke’s fists open, forcing him to stop digging his nails into his own palms. “If you’re sure.”

“He’s not real,” Sasuke says again, not actually sure if he’s trying to convince his brother or himself.

“Can you still train?” Brother asks, face carefully blank but his gaze sharp. 

Sasuke knows he’s assessing capability not passing judgement, but he feels a crawling shame rise in his chest. Father would judge him. Brother’s just going easy on him. Sasuke’s a shinobi now, he has to fight no matter what the circumstances.

“Put your eyepatch back on. We’ll train together another day, little brother.”

Brother taps his forehead gently and ruffles his hair. He’s already moving away from the training ground by the time Sasuke can bring his stiff knees to move, his shaking hands to reaffix his eyepatch, and gather his gear.

Itachi walks slowly so Sasuke can catch up, and he slouches along, his shoulders bowed.

____________

He feels like it’s his fault that his team isn’t nominated for the Chūnin Exams that come up at the end of the month.

Maybe Brother told Kakashi-sensei that Sasuke was seeing things.

Father talks about having high expectations at the dinner table, Mother says she knows she’ll be proud of him, and then Sasuke says “What exams?” and they both go dead quiet.

He’s been to the Chūnin Exams before with his family, when one of the other Uchiha genin were up for promotion, but it’s been a while. There aren’t any other Uchiha kids his age, no one else in his graduating class, and the younger ones are only babies still, not even Academy age.

Apparently everyone has been expecting the Uchiha to finally make a show at this year’s exam, but their sensei hasn’t said a single thing to them about it.

Team 7 has been going on terrible D-rank missions non-stop since they got back from the Land of Waves, as though Kakashi-sensei wants them too exhausted to ask for another C-rank until they’re thirty. If Sasuke hadn’t been so tired, he probably wouldn’t have opened his dumb mouth before he thought about it. Then he could have fooled Father into thinking everything was fine, and then he and Naruto could have harassed Kakashi-sensei into letting them into the exams.

Instead he’s apparently as much of a dumbass as his dumbass teammate, and now Father knows that they’re not even being nominated.

Father scowls at Sasuke across the table. “I will have words with the Hokage,” he says, and then he doesn’t talk to Sasuke again all night.

Sasuke eats his natto in silence.

____________

Kakashi-sensei is unrepentant when they see him, despite Naruto’s screeching. “Hokage-sama understands my reasoning,” is all he says, and then he makes them go walk dogs.

At least they’re not caught off guard by the Suna genin. Sasuke and Sakura are muttering bitterly as they hold up Naruto between them after he got himself and the dog blown up, and then Naruto’s irritating little friends show up and get in everyone’s way.

When Sasuke takes out the boy in black and facepaint, his focus isn’t even on him, older as he is by at least a year and bigger than all of them. It’s on the dark and grating chakra that has been hovering just out of sight for the entire interaction. The chakra moves almost as fast as Kakashi-sensei, appearing behind him in the tree, but Sasuke has been waiting for it. He hurls another rock, and even though it pings off a shifting wall of sand, all three Suna nin look astonished.

“I’ll see you at the Chūnin Exams,” says the red-haired boy, his voice deep and his cold eyes narrow.

Sasuke scoffs bitterly, unable to push down the resentment. “You won’t.”

The boy stares at him unblinking, and Sasuke hates the feeling of his chakra rubbing against him like grit under his skin. There’s something wrong with that boy.

“Then I’ll find you after.”

____________

The woman from Kusa attacks him a week later.

They’ve had a lot of free time during the Chūnin Exams, apparently Kakashi-sensei has his own mission and can’t watch over them, and non-participants aren’t allowed to watch until the tournament, which isn’t for another month. He trains with Sakura and Naruto most mornings, but it’s loose and half-assed without their jōnin-sensei.

Sasuke has been sticking around after, running himself ragged at the training grounds alone. With Brother out of the village and Father ignoring his existence every time he’s home, Sasuke is trying not to be home as much as possible, even though Mother has been concerned.

If he can’t be in this Chūnin Exam, he’s damn well going to be in the next one, and that means he has to get stronger.

He’s out late one night, just as the sky dips into purple swaths of shadows and the stars begin to appear. He’s breathing hard and wiping stinging embers from his lower lip, the Phoenix Flower jutsu flickering out into darkness and leaving behind glowing patches in his vision, when he feels the strongest, most terrifying killing intent since Zabuza. It’s worse than Zabuza, it slices into his skin and shreds the muscles of his legs and rips him apart from the inside. He’s on the ground before he can take a breath and then there is a strange woman in the training ground across from him, with three others flanking.

Sasuke should run.

Call for help, maybe.

Drop dead, perhaps, all alone in the training ground.

The pain in his thigh from his own knife gets him onto his feet in time to turn around and meet the bulkiest of the shinobi behind him, deflecting his attack. He can feel the chakra in the air as it moves to keep attacking, and kicks himself away, as far out of reach as he can get, only to be met by the one with spiky hair. He’s not as good as his friend, not a match for the Sharingan even with his air cannons.

Sasuke can still feel the murderous stare of the woman and it throws him off. She’s just standing there, watching from under her hat.

Sasuke breaks the spiky-haired one’s arms, sets the girl’s hair on fire and wraps her up in wire, and then he’s incapacitated by the bulky, bandaged one with his chakra air attacks, drilling in to his head and sending him reeling. 

Sasuke cries out and clutches his head, and the woman is in front of him where he kneels on the ground. The bulky boy pulls his arms behind his back and his head up by his hair to meet the woman’s creepy dead eyes.

“I looked for you all week, you know,” she says, her voice low and throbbing. It makes Sasuke shudder. “I wasted a lot of time in that forest, only to find out you were never there in the first place. No matter.” She lifts one hand and her cold, cold fingers grip Sasuke’s chin, and turn his face this way and that, a cruel shallow grin on her wide lips. She pushes his hair aside. “Oh, this is no good. I didn’t realize you were defective,” her voice drops even lower into a hiss, and her fingers claw into his face. 

She peels his eyepatch off, slowly, almost tenderly.

Sasuke clenches his eyes shut. Even if he could hear properly, if his head wasn’t ringing and his ears throbbing and his shoulders screaming in pain, he doesn’t understand what she wants from him.

“Look at me, little boy,” says the woman, “Little Uchiha, let me see how damaged your eyes are.”

The bulky nin behind him shifts his grip so he’s holding Sasuke’s head between both his hands, and if Sasuke tries to wrench away like he wants to he could seriously injure his neck.

When the woman pries Sasuke’s eyes open, he loses his breath entirely.

He can hear her say “What’s this? Looks just fine to me. Perhaps you’ll do after all,” and something else, but he can’t focus on what she’s saying at all. She has melted, half her face sloughing off in his left eye, leaving behind white skin and narrow lips and yellow eyes, and in his left eye her head extends upwards, neck stretching beyond reason like a rubber band stretching. 

His gaze tracks her ghost head, oh gods what if she’s a spirit, she’ll kill him if he watches her neck grow, he has to look up all the way up to where her head will stop or she’ll kill him. He blinks, stares up, meets that ghost head’s eyes, and then its face contorts, grows fangs, and comes back down towards him in a rush.

Sasuke wrenches, even though it’s a bad idea. 

He throws bulky boy over his shoulder at the Kusa nin. She dodges, comes at him again as he staggers to his feet, and then there are jōnin everywhere, Konoha nin surrounding them, and Kakashi-sensei catches him as he starts to fall.

“Orochimaru,” he hears someone snarl, before Kakashi-sensei whisks him away from the training ground, and the abrupt movement with his broken ear drum and his wrenched neck muscles sends him spiraling into unconsciousness.

____________

He’s on pain medication when he wakes up, and the half-sight of his mother sitting next to his hospital bed makes him flinch like he hasn’t in years. He squints his eyes at the room, looking through his eyelashes, and tries to find his hands.

Okay, his hands are there, right at the end of his wrists like they’re supposed to be, now he needs to make them useful. He slaps himself in the face.

“Ow.”

“Sasuke, you don’t have to open your eyes, love,” says Mother, petting his head and combing through his bangs with her long fingers. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”

“Okay,” he sighs, and drops his eyelids. He lets his hand rest beside his head on the pillow.

“What was that?” That’s Kakashi-sensei’s voice.

“Oi, Sasuke, you awake?” And Naruto.

“I’m awake,” Sasuke grumbles, feeling like he’s swaying even though he’s lying down. “Stop yelling.”

“I’m not yelling!” Naruto yells.

There’s a sharp noise of skin against skin, and Sakura says “You’re always yelling!”

Kakashi-sensei threatens to boot them out of the room, and Sasuke can feel Mother’s tension in her fingers, twitching ever so slightly in his hair. She relaxes her grip when Sasuke turns his head slightly towards her, pressing into her touch.

“What happened? That woman…”

“You were attacked by Orochimaru, an S-rank missing-nin formerly of Konoha, late last night. He was disguised as a genin from Kusa, here to take the Chūnin Exams. His compatriots were from Otogakure, a newly established Hidden Village, also here ostensibly to take the Chūnin Exams. We suspected he was in the village but lost him in the Forest of Death during the second round of the exam. We didn’t think he would attack someone out in the open,” says Kakashi-sensei. He turns a page in his book, the soft rasp of paper against paper. 

Sasuke can see light through his eyelids, a bright cold blue light, not the warmth of the sun through the windows. He squints his eyes open again, just slits, blurred and indistinct through his eyelashes, but he can still see the Chidori crackling around Kakashi-sensei’s hand, around his stupid book.

“You’ll burn your book,” Sasuke says, lifting his other hand to shield his eyes from the bright light. “Who are you attacking anyway, you should put that out.” Everybody goes quiet, and Sasuke wonders if he should just go back to sleep.

He feels a hand on his face, familiar, his brother’s hand, and it presses his left eye shut, then holds. The light from Chidori is gone, and Sasuke drops his hand in relief. “Thanks,” he murmurs, “That’s better. So what did this guy want with me, anyway?”

Kakashi-sensei’s voice is very weird when he starts talking again, so Sasuke blinks up at him, feeling secure with Brother’s hand closing his left eye. He lifts his fingers and curls them into Brother’s sleeve, holding him in place. Sakura and Naruto are perched at the foot of his hospital bed, Kakashi-sensei is propped up against the door, and Mother is sitting in the only chair. Brother is leaning over the side of the bed now, but it looks like he had been sitting with his back against the window.

“He, uh— he wanted… We think he wanted to mark you, somehow, he’s… He has been known to seek out talented individuals and interesting clans, for their power and information. Mitarashi Anko is the last Konoha nin who was marked by him, she was the one who discovered his presence in the village this time, and the one to notice first when he attacked you last night.”

“He wanted to look at my eyes. And his face was wrong,” Sasuke says, trying to gesture to the half-melted appearance he remembered from the night before. “All gross.”

Kakashi-sensei hums, “Hmm, I didn’t see anything wrong with his face myself, he was disguised the whole time as far as I know, but I wasn’t there for long, really.”

“Am I okay?”

“You’re going to be fine, little brother,” Itachi says, and rubs his thumb on Sasuke’s cheek like he used to. “You’ll be out of here in a couple of days.”

____________

Brother brings Sasuke a new eyepatch, and Naruto looks seriously miffed the next time he visits and Sasuke’s sitting upright and wearing it.

“Aah!” he shouts, one finger rudely pointed at Sasuke’s face, “Sasuke, you jerk, I was gonna get some answers!” 

“You were not, loser, you couldn’t get anything from me even if I was still all drugged up.”

Naruto huffs and screeches, and climbs onto Sasuke’s bed to try and get at his face. Naruto’s damn lucky Sasuke’s mother isn’t there to see it or he’d definitely get killed. Sasuke wrestles him away and kicks him out the window.

His next visitor is that red-haired boy from Suna.

Sasuke’s basically just biding his time until Mother lets him check out of the hospital, and Sakura was around earlier to visit Ino. They had told him some of the rumors going around about the Chūnin Exam preliminary rounds. Several of their rookie year mates had ended up hurt, and that kid from the year ahead of them might never even stand again, let alone continue being a shinobi.

The red-haired boy was dangerous. 

“What’s your name?” Sasuke asks the boy, who’s just standing there staring at him. His eyes are wide and fixed, but Sasuke’s not really sure if he even sees him.

“Gaara,” says the boy. There’s a sound of shifting sand. The boy steps farther into the room. “You are Uchiha Sasuke. You should have been at the fight. I could have proved my existence with you. I want to.”

“How do you prove your existence?”

“How does anyone?”

Sasuke appreciates the existentialism of the question, but he was looking for something a little more concrete. He scowls and slides his hair across his face. 

Naruto chooses that moment to come clambering back in through the window.

Predictably, he starts yelling. “You bastard!”

There are apparently too many witnesses in the hospital for Gaara of the Desert to stay and prove his existence, but even though he backs out of the door, he stands in the hallway and stares in at them until Green Leotard-sensei passes by on the way to see his student.

____________

When Gaara almost kills Neji during the tournament and the village gets attacked, Sasuke finds himself, Naruto, and Sakura sent after the murderous bastard. Kakashi-sensei and Brother and the ANBU hidden in the stands take on the Oto nin, and there is fighting in the streets as they go, all the jōnin Sasuke has ever seen working with the visiting Suna nin to suppress explosions and keep the civilians out of the way.

Sakura gets hurt, and Naruto saves them.

Sasuke has never seen his friend fight like that, one boy and a thousand clones against a monster taller than the trees. He’s there at his side, along with the wind girl, and with wind and fire they do their best to keep Naruto going. 

They are so very small.

Then Naruto grows, expands, his chakra blossoming out around him like a wildfire, and Sasuke can barely stand the press against his senses. He feels it like a light grenade, overwhelming and it takes his breath away.

This is something about his friend that he has never seen before, and Sasuke feels like his eyes have been opened for the first time in his entire life. Gaara seems to feel the same way, when they get him immobile and bleeding on the ground, breathless, eyes alive and wide open with wonder in the face of Naruto’s relentless friendship.

____________

Sasuke does not know what the mark on his shoulder is supposed to mean. He can’t feel it, can’t sense anything different about himself, but the mark has been there every time he looks in the mirror since the Chūnin Exams. He traces the otherwise bare curve of his own throat and wonders when he got it.

He tries to look it up in the library, but the books he has access to don’t seem to be relevant, and he doesn’t know how to get access to higher-level ones yet. If it’s a seal, it’s far more simple than any other seal he can find, and then he discovers that it’s actually two seals, an unidentified one in the middle, and a containment seal circling it.

Kakashi-sensei finds him with his book on sealing when he shows up early to training one day and surprises them all. None of them even expected him to show up.

“Oh ho, doing some research, Sasuke-kun? I didn’t know you had an interest in fuinjutsu.”

Sakura had taken Sasuke’s recent habit of carrying around his library books as an indication that she should start studying things too. She’s got medical texts stuffed in her bag and seems to be overwhelmed by the theory behind lifesaving medical ninjutsu and the general concept of using your own life force to sustain someone else’s.

Naruto thinks they’re nerds and tells them so accordingly. He brings comics, so if Sasuke and Sakura get too caught up in reading and discussing theory, he can still hang out with them, instead of wandering off to train on his own.

“Do you know fuinjutsu, sensei?” Sasuke asks, putting his index finger in between the pages of his book to mark his place.

“I do alright in a pinch,” says Kakashi-sensei, in that way where he’s lying. Sasuke squints, because he can’t figure out if that means that Kakashi-sensei can’t make seals for shit, or if he’s secretly the second-coming of the Legendary Toad Senin.

Sasuke bites his lip. He knows, well he thinks he knows, the danger of revealing something his eye can see. But he doesn’t know what it means, and it’s beginning to look like it’s way too far out of his reach to find out by himself.

“Have you ever seen a seal like this?” Sasuke brings out his notebook and a pen and scratches out the three tomoe and the containment seal of his mark. He rips the page out and hands it to Kakashi-sensei, who holds it between two fingers and goes very, very still.

“Where did you see this seal, Sasuke?”

His voice has never sounded like that before. Sasuke goes cold. Sakura scoots backwards, trying to get out of sensei’s line of sight. Even Naruto, who could not care less about seals, not when there are space princesses to read about, looks up from his comic.

“What does it mean?”

Kakashi-sensei doesn’t answer him. Instead he quick steps forward, puts a knee in Sasuke’s back, grabs him by the hair and yanks his collar aside, baring the line of his throat. His hand releases his collar, and he says “Kai!”

“Sensei! What are you doing?!” Sakura is on her feet, Naruto just behind her, both of them crowding around where Kakashi-sensei is frozen in place. Sasuke doesn’t dare try to move.

Kakashi-sensei’s hand is warm and gentle when it brushes against Sasuke’s shoulder, in strong contrast to his previous treatment. He loosens his grip on Sasuke’s hair and pets as though in contrition. “Nothing.” He steps back.

Sasuke slowly rights himself, tugging his ripped shirt collar back over his shoulder.

“It’s a curse seal,” says Kakashi-sensei, as though none of that had just happened. “One of Orochimaru’s own designs. It infects the victim with Orochimaru’s chakra, makes them susceptible to his will, and can, over time and without proper containment, slowly destroy their humanity.”

Sasuke looks down at his little sketch, and shivers. “He tried to bite me. That’s what he was going to do, when he attacked.”

“And you’re sure he didn’t, Sasuke-kun? Absolutely positive that he didn’t bite you? No pain or fevers, no unnatural chakras, nothing?”

Sasuke shakes his head. He’s felt nothing of the sort.

“Good,” Kakashi-sensei says, and even though Sasuke flinches back a little, this time his hand is strong and steady, reassuring in its clasp on his shoulder. “I won’t let him take you, Sasuke. I promise.”

Sasuke wants to believe him. But he knows, he absolutely knows that the mark is on his body. He just doesn’t understand how.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (a scene not witnessed:
> 
> “Hokage-sama. Have there been any reports of infiltration in the village in the last two days?”
> 
> “Why do you ask?”
> 
> “I believe I saw a Kiri missing-nin this afternoon.”
> 
> “Who was this missing-nin?” 
> 
> “I don’t know. I could not recognize any of his features, only that he had a marked forehead protector.”
> 
> “Genjutsu?”
> 
> “... Highly unlikely, sir. Perhaps a bloodline limit.”
> 
> “Where did this happen?”
> 
> “Uchiha compound training ground six, in the Eastern woods.”
> 
> “What did you see this missing-nin do?”
> 
> “Nothing, sir. He was standing in the woods. When I looked again I lost sight of him. He did not attack, and there has been no sign of him since.”
> 
> “Hmm. Kiri missing-nin are especially troublesome, and this is not a good time to deal with even more infiltrators. I will arrange for an updated list of Kiri defectors for the Bingo Book, and have ANBU keep watch.”
> 
> “Yes, Hokage-sama.”
> 
> “Thank you for your report, Itachi-kun.”)

“Sasuke, I have something for you to look at.”

Sasuke is on his way out the door, breakfast toast in his mouth, overnight pack on his shoulder. “I have a mission, Brother.” He stops anyway, shifts his weight back into the room towards his brother.

Brother smiles, and holds out a nondescript black book. “Kakashi-san won’t be there to reprimand you.”

Sasuke scowls. “He always knows.”

“Take it with you, then.”

Sasuke reaches for the book, but Brother holds on to it for a moment, and it hangs, suspended in the air between them.

“I think you should tell Kakashi-san.”

“... Tell him what?” Sasuke asks, feeling the book drop into his hands, a surprisingly heavy weight once Brother lets go of it.

Itachi eyes him intently, and turns back to his breakfast. “Come find me when you get back.”

“Yes, Brother,” Sasuke says, tucking the book into his pack.

____________

“More research, Sasuke-kun?” 

“My brother gave it to me.”

He understands what Brother was telling him. He’s not stupid, he’s twelve. 

The first face he recognizes is Orochimaru, right at the front of the book. That slit yellow eye, that dead white skin, the little twist to his thin lips. The rest of the face is less terrifying when it’s not peering out from the burned remains of someone else’s skin. 

The second one is that man. Beady eyes in a broad face, hair standing up like a knife, Hoshigaki Kisame, his brother’s ghost. 

Sasuke has, at this point, spent nearly as much time in his life doubting his vision as he had believing it, and frankly, those first few years don’t count.

He should say something. 

The man is real. The man is a criminal, he was in Konoha and Sasuke told Brother about it but now he should tell someone else, right? If he saw that man, and he was really there, then Sasuke let an S-rank missing-nin wander in to Konoha, into the Uchiha training grounds, and he did nothing, and maybe that’ll make him a criminal too.

So: either the man was there, and what Sasuke sees with his left eye is real, or: the man was not there, and Sasuke sees things his mind made up. 

Or.

“Kakashi-sensei, this book doesn’t mention his cloak.”

Kakashi-sensei spits his tea out through his mask and stares at him across the inn’s bedroom. 

Sasuke lowers the bingo book he was holding open to show off Kisame’s page. Maybe there was a better way to start that conversation.

They’re in the Land of Tea, his first mission out of the village since the Great Naruto Bridge became a tourist stop. Sasuke’s not resentful that Naruto got to go Hokage-hunting with that weird old man, specifically because that weird old man made him deeply irritable. Sasuke finally pulled out Brother’s gift when they stopped for the night. Their client, a merchant’s daughter on her way to be married, is in the next room with Sakura. 

“Gross.” Naruto looks delighted.

Kakashi-sensei looks pained. He dabs ineffectually at his tea-stained mask with his sleeve, and asks, “What cloak?”

Sasuke takes a deep breath. “It’s black, with red clouds. I’ve seen it before, but this page doesn’t mention it in his “Last Seen” description.”

“Where did you last see Hoshigaki Kisame, Sasuke? You haven’t even left the village.”

Sasuke turns his eye down, and braces himself. This is a bad place to do this. He should have waited until he was with Brother, and also he should have told Brother first, Kakashi-sensei doesn’t know the first thing about this.

“Sometimes my eye sees things.”

There is silence in the whole room. Someone downstairs sounds like they’re buying a round of drinks, but they are very far away.

“Wh-what does that mean?”

Sasuke lifts his hand to his eyepatch and slowly pulls it away from his eye. He holds still for a moment, adjusting to the light, and then blinks up at Kakashi-sensei from behind his bangs.

“Naruto, can you give us a moment?” sensei asks.

“What? No!” Naruto wails in protest, digging his sharp little nails into the doorframe so Kakashi-sensei has to pry him off. 

Kakashi-sensei boots him firmly out the door, and then makes hand-seals for a silence barrier.

Sasuke watches in interest, memorizing them. 

“Now. _What?_”

Sasuke’s got his Sharingan active, and he looks at Kakashi-sensei trying to see if he has any ghosts. Probably he does, Sasuke has begun to figure out that all shinobi have ghosts, but these are not ones that he can see with his eye.

Sasuke takes a deep breath. “Sometimes, when I look through it, my eye sees things. I saw this man in the village. He was wearing a black cloak, but it’s not mentioned.” It’s not a better explanation in any way at all. Sasuke is becoming an expert at evasion, and he practices the Uchiha tradition of ignoring questions he doesn’t want to answer with a rigor that impresses even Father, when he’s not being disapproving of it. 

Kakashi-sensei asks for clarification. 

Sasuke makes it clear he will not elaborate until he receives an answer to his question.

Kakashi-sensei sighs, and scratches underneath his forehead-protector. “A black cloak with red clouds is the uniform of the international S-rank organization known as Akatsuki. Hoshigaki Kisame is a suspected member, but there have been no eye-witnesses who have survived their encounters to confirm his induction in the last few years.”

“Oh.” Sasuke moves to put his eyepatch back on.

Kakashi-sensei crosses the room and grabs his hand, holding it away from his face. He tilts Sasuke’s head up by the chin, and stares at his uncovered face intently. His grey eye flits back and forth, taking in the details he hasn’t spent much time observing.

“Sasuke, what is going on?”

Sasuke takes a deep breath.

____________

They are attacked by Oto nin on their way back to Konoha. The merchant’s daughter’s wedding was very… flowery. Ino would have liked it. Sakura cried. Naruto accidentally initiated a dance-off and made the merchant’s daughter’s new husband also cry.

The Oto nin have clearly been following them since they left the Land of Fire. Sasuke could feel them hovering at the very edges of his sensor range, vanishing into the distance while they were in town, and then coming at them again as soon as they leave. Kakashi-sensei had sent his ninken to Konoha for reinforcements as soon as Sasuke told him, so their race is to meet up with the chūnin backup squad before the Oto nin get to them.

They defeat the big orange-haired guy barely, his own chūnin squad laughably easy in comparison. He’s monstrously strong, and when black marks start spreading across his skin, Sasuke shivers in horror at the thought of how close he came to the same disfiguring fate. 

He does not like how they were explicitly avoiding him, aiming not to kill or maim, but constantly around him at his companions, disengaging whenever he attacked. Sasuke had never been thrown into so many bushes in his life.

____________

Hoshigaki Kisame is confirmed as a member of Akatsuki, apparently partnered with a Kumo nin only recently defected from his village.

Kakashi-sensei looks at him differently. It doesn’t feel like a bad different necessarily, but it’s calculating, curious, more watchful where before sometimes it felt like he was looking past Sasuke and seeing something, someone else. His brother, maybe. Everyone else did, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume. If not Itachi, there were plenty of other Uchiha, older, more accomplished, more powerful, to compare him to.

Now he looks at Sasuke like he’s trying to make a decision, and is searching for clues to help him decide.

Sasuke does not know what to show him to help.

____________

He sees the thing under Naruto’s skin the day his eyes evolve without his consent. 

They are training under Kakashi-sensei’s watchful eye, a taijutsu spar that sends them ricocheting off each other with every clash. Sasuke’s acrobatic tumbling and handsprings against Naruto’s brute force and steady grounding is a constant push and pull of advantage. Naruto’s not allowed to use his clones or his Rasengan, and Sasuke is restricted from his Katon. He doesn’t even have his Sharingan active. Kakashi-sensei has been pushing their speed recently, physical stamina to support their ninjutsu-heavy techniques and battle approaches. 

Sasuke is beginning to feel like he could be almost as fast as Brother.

He knows, inherently, that his Sharingan is unusual. Aside from the vision thing, he first activated it at seven, which would have been impressive by any Uchiha standard if it hadn’t happened while unconscious during an epileptic fit.

The first time it evolved, and he engaged it intentionally, he was in the middle of a life-or-death battle, which is, generally speaking, the usual way of doing things. Developing it in training wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual.

Sasuke hadn’t even activated it, though. There is no reason for his eyes to evolve.

Naruto is in the air when it happens, flying towards him with his fist raised, and suddenly Sasuke’s eyes are alight, and he can see exactly what Naruto will do. It’s more than that, even, he can see what he _might_ do, with strong inclinations to the most likely projected course. Sasuke is not there when he lands, and strikes back, slapping his hand down, spinning on one leg, diverting his momentum and hitting him with a punch to the kidney and a knee to the ribs that sends him sprawling in the dust.

Then Sasuke drops to his knees and claws at his face. 

His left eye feels like it’s swelling, burning, pressing against the eyepatch, so he rips it off and cries, tears streaming involuntarily down his cheek like a release of pressure he did not know was building up. The world is so _sharp_.

Naruto is scrambling to his feet, torn between railing at being beaten and snatching Sasuke up by the collar to shake him back into composure.

And he is burning. Burning with chakra like Sasuke has never imagined before, eyes red and slit, teeth sharp in a snarl, bubbling over with maliciousness that is not his own. He’s seen Naruto fighting, seen his aggression and the way his face goes dark like that sometimes, but he has never seen this kind of rage before. That chakra extends, a massive, boiling, independant hand shooting out and reaching for him.

Sasuke does not mean to scoot back, away from his friend, but he does it anyway.

The look on Naruto’s face tells him he knows what Sasuke saw.

Sasuke finds him later and punches him in the shoulder hard enough to knock him down, then bullies him all the way to Ichiraku’s to get that look off his face.

____________

Sasuke is attacked by Oto nin every time he leaves the village.

____________

Tsunade-sama is a much meaner Hokage than the Sandaime, even if the man sits benevolently in the back of her office, smiling through everything she shouts during their official transition period. She’s a lot more prone to casual violence too, which is surprisingly not actually that common in a town full of high-powered shinobi with suspect coping mechanisms and generational trauma. 

Sasuke doesn’t know if he should trust her or not. Sakura loves training with her, is constantly overworked but glowing all the time with excitement. Naruto believes in her unequivocally, which means more to Sasuke than he wants to admit, but Father mutters even more about having _another Senju_ as Hokage than he did about the Sandaime. It’s less angry, and more unsettled than Sasuke has ever heard him. Mother’s anxiousness has infiltrated their home with a constant, low lying tension. If Tsunade-sama hadn’t assigned Brother to her personal staff, Sasuke feels like he might be listening to more family fights than he did when he was a kid. 

Every time Brother comes back from working with the Hokage, Mother’s shoulders slip a little in relief, and Father’s voice gets a little less sharp. They are so thankful each time he returns home safe.

After the fifth Oto nin attack, Tsunade-sama forbids Sasuke from leaving Konoha while Orochimaru is still unaccounted for. It’s irritating, until Naruto tells him that he’s going on a long-term training mission with that creep Jiraiya, and won’t be _back_ to Konoha for two years or more, and then it’s infuriating. Sasuke punches him in the eye when he comes to deliver the good news.

“What the hell, you jerk?” he yowls, hands over his face like he’s trying to pull a Sasuke.

“Nothing, have fun on your stupid mission,” Sasuke growls, “You can’t become Hokage if you aren’t even in the village, right, dumbass?”

Naruto strikes an action pose. “Hey! Tsunade-baachan became Hokage and we found her drunk off her ass in a casino! Besides, I’m not gonna lose to _you._”

“Good luck, loser, I’ll be here keeping your precious village safe, while you’re gallivanting off in the middle of nowhere.”

They fight, and then Naruto leaves, and Sasuke just wants to punch him in the face one more time.

____________

Brother sighs and shakes his head when Sasuke comes home still huffing, and pokes him in the forehead. “You idiot,” he says in his lowest, fondest voice.

____________

Sasuke picks a fight with every genin on the training fields for a week before Kakashi-sensei comes back from a mission, takes one look at him, and signs in resignation. He bundles Sasuke off to a more private training field and runs him ragged with his ninken.

Once Sasuke is sufficiently sweaty and streaked with mud, panting on the ground, Kakashi-sensei stands over his head and stares down at him with amusement. Sasuke can’t see his face, but he knows he’s laughing at him.

“Now, I know you’re bored without your little friend, Sasuke-kun, but I promise, I’ll do my best to keep you entertained. I’ll train you whenever I’m in the village, and you’ll go on plenty of missions in town to keep you busy.”

“In town missions are almost all D-ranks,” Sasuke whines, still face-first in the dirt.

“Ah, which means it’s up to you to make them exciting! Up you get now, Sasuke-kun, we’re not nearly done here.”

Sasuke groans and drags himself up off the ground, dirt stains from collarbone to kneecaps from where he did that slide under Bull’s legs. 

“Now, what’s your chakra affinity?”

Dirt. 

“Uchiha have fire affinity,” Sasuke boasts, crossing his muddy arms in a haughty impression of his father. “We invented half the Katon jutsu used today, including the Great Fireball Technique.”

Kakashi-sensei grins down at him. “You’re proficient in the Great Fireball Technique, I’ve noticed. How long did it take you to learn it?”

Deflating, Sasuke looks away with a scowl. “A week.” Brother did it in a day. Sasuke’s not sure how long it took Father, but it must have been something like that.

Kakashi-sensei emits a smug silence. “Well, we’ll test it anyway, huh? Take this paper.”

The chakra paper crinkles between his fingers and Sasuke feels a spark.

____________

Brother moves into his own apartment, outside the compound. Cousin Shisui follows him within a month, then Izumi, Yuuto, and Mirai, all of Sasuke’s favorite cousins, leaving behind their family homes for apartments in the village center. 

Brother skates his thumb across Sasuke’s cheek and says “Anytime you want to come visit, you are welcome, little brother,” and does not explain why he’s leaving. 

Sasuke has never known he could feel this desperately lonely. 

The house seems so quiet without Brother. For all that he was not a loud man, his presence filled a room the way Mother’s and Father’s don’t quite reach. Sasuke barely makes a mark.

He sees his Uchiha cousins in town a lot more often than when they lived in the compound, eating at the restaurants, walking with their chūnin teams, or Brother working for the Hokage, moving in and out of official buildings with solemn grace next to Shizune-san. It’s nice to look up and see him sometimes, from a distance. 

Just the knowledge that Brother will not be there makes him shrink in on himself every time he walks through the compound towards their house. Sometimes Father will bring one of Sasuke’s uncles home and talk about Brother, about his job, praising him and the work he does with the Hokage. His uncles are more disparaging about the Clan heir leaving the compound, and much less discrete than Father is. Even Mother looks up when she hears them talk and sends sour looks towards Father’s study.

Sasuke has long since learned to behave as if he cannot hear his father talk in private conversations, so he takes it upon himself to distract his mother like she used to try and distract him. They spend more time together cooking dinner and making tea than they have since Sasuke was seven, but he still does his absolute best to avoid coming home until it’s at least dark out.

He trains alone a lot.

____________

When Kakashi-sensei isn’t training him, which he does with a casual approach to regularity, he trains based on Brother’s regimes. He takes his eyepatch off and opens both eyes wide. Very, _very_ carefully, he covers over his right eye, and works on throwing with just his left to aim. He activates his Sharingan, which doesn’t work as well for solo training, but he still has to get used to that incredible clarity that he had not known was missing from the world. It’s surprisingly distracting, how many leaves there are in a forest.

Sometimes, he looks over his shoulder and sees Orochimaru.

He learns that instead of having a panic attack, he should mention it to Kakashi-sensei, who will check for updates from the Hokage. Sensei always returns with a solemn shake of his head, and word that Orochimaru is still in Oto as far as anyone knows.

Sometimes, he can see a sword in his hand. 

Brother had carried a sword when he worked in ANBU, it’s a common weapon for the elite task force, but Sasuke doesn’t know anyone specifically who uses kenjutsu in their daily practice.

He starts with a stick, figuring that he doesn’t want to tell anyone if he messes it up. It feels incredibly stupid after about fifteen minutes because he genuinely has no idea what he’s doing, and then he talks to Father, who looks intrigued. Mother gets out her old daisho. They’re a little too long for him, and he’s not ready to fight with a matched set, but the feel of the katana’s grip in his hands feels right and exhilarating at the same time.

Kakashi-sensei gives him a long, slow look when Sasuke turns up for training with his mother’s katana in hand. Sasuke shifts his feet, and forces himself to stand still. It’s that same look where it’s like he’s seeing someone else, or trying to find someone else inside Sasuke’s skin.

“Do you know kenjutsu?”

“I do alright in a pinch.”

____________

Kakashi-sensei rolls his eye and wanders off, coming back three hours later with two bokken instead. 

The clack of wood hitting wood is disappointing in comparison to the clang of metal, but it’s still immensely satisfying.

____________

Gods, no wonder no one he knows uses swords, Sasuke is terrible at this. He hasn’t felt so uncoordinated since he first closed one eye. Something about the weight and the reach throws him off in ways he wasn’t expecting.

Whatever, it’s not like Naruto can see him.

Sasuke gets back up and adjusts his grip.

____________

The jobs Sasuke can take in the village are boring and stupid. He’s not qualified to work in the Hokage’s office like Brother or the KMPF like Father, he’s too young to work at a bar, even though technically by shinobi standards he’s a functioning adult, and he’s too short to be taken seriously as a bouncer in the civilian districts. The shinobi districts don’t need bouncers. 

He takes construction jobs, and library shifts, and hunts down that damn cat. 

He picks up trash. 

Sasuke left the village for the first time in his entire life _that year_. He doesn’t understand why it feels so confining now, just a few months later.

Sometimes he works with other teams, mixing and matching team mates from the Rookie 9 and Green Leotard-sensei’s team, but they’re often sent out of town, leaving him behind. Sakura is almost always busy with the hospital and her training with Tsunade-sama. Sasuke finds that he likes working with Shikamaru, and once he actually sets himself on fire to avoid working with Ino. Neji is a snob who reminds him of his terrible older cousins, but Sasuke will never turn down training with him. Lee is the best taijutsu sparring he’s ever come up against, fast enough to push Sasuke’s Sharingan and make him work for it.

Tenten is a surprise. She’s a weapons master, not a sword specialist in particular, but she knows well how to use all her weapons, and even better she has lots of them to choose from.

She has a resolve about her, a stand-by-her-beliefs that reminds him of Naruto.

And at least when she blushes and flirts she doesn’t screech, which is apparently the best he can hope for.

____________

Brother finds him training alone one day and steps smoothly in to meet his kata, turning a movement exercise into a synchronized dance, stepping, pivoting, balancing together. 

Their forearms meet between them and then Brother pushes, palm out. 

Sasuke retreats, flowing backwards, and returns with a over-head cross strike, rolls when Brother guides him through, comes back up. The slow push and pull gains momentum, Brother steps back, steps forward, meeting blade hands with parries, striking back.

Sasuke presses an advantage he sees, and Brother throws him with enough force that he can’t just roll. He shifts his weight midair, springs off his hands, and lands in a fighting stance facing Brother.

Then they’re sparring, properly.

At some point Sasuke realizes, or rather he _understands_, that he has never once seen Itachi’s true strength. He was too young to see any of his assessment exams, and he’s certainly never been on a mission with Brother. In training, every time Sasuke improves, Brother steps up his engagement to match. 

It’s finally evident, now that Sasuke is pushing himself to levels he did not know he could reach, after Zabuza and Haku, after Orochimaru’s henchmen, now that he understands the heights he has to strive for to become worthy, just how strong his brother really is.

Brother adjusts his stance, meets Sasuke’s lunge head on, and pins him to the ground.

“Well done,” he says in his low voice. It’s genuine, because Brother is always genuine, Sasuke has never known him to lie, but Sasuke still feels inadequate. _Well done_ is only so well, in context.

Brother hauls him up to his feet, sets him right. “Mother told me you’ve started kenjutsu training?”

“Ah, yes. It’s… fine.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

Brother steps to the side and retrieves two katana. He offers Mother’s to Sasuke, and sets his own at his hip.

“Take your eyepatch off, little brother.”

As they fight, Sasuke realizes he can see his own arms move in the Sharingan, just before his actual movements. He follows them once, and finds himself in a block he did not know until he’s already under Brother’s guard, pressing him off balance.

Brother blinks, the tip of Sasuke’s blade at his throat.

“Well done,” he says. 

Sasuke is too surprised to do more than react when Brother steps back into a gedan stance.

“Again.”

____________

Kakashi-sensei teaches him Chidori. 

They start training with live blades, and Kakashi-sensei sends him to ask Asuma-sensei about his trench knives. 

Sasuke feels fast, and strong, and like he’s standing on the edge of being able to do anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh, i love reading your comments, i just have a lot of anxiety, sorry kids
> 
> i'm also so so thrilled to see everyone's theories, i hope you guys like some of the events in this chapter, u know who you are


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just want to point out that this has gotten wildly out of control.
> 
> i was gonna time skip the hell out of all this but then sasuke made life choices with his usual forethought and reasoning skills

The first time Sasuke leaves the village in a year, he passes the Chūnin Exams with Sakura. 

Kakashi-sensei vanished for a month while the last exams were being held in Suna, and all the nominated genin left as well, and he _still wasn’t allowed to go_. He set all of training ground 43 on fire, and then petitioned the Hokage in a slightly more rational manner, and then he set training grounds 44-48 on fire too.

It _did not help_ that Brother had been in the room during Sasuke’s petition, and he had started the meeting looking concerned and serious, and ended it looking amused and validated.

Then Sasuke had to spend a full week restoring training grounds 43-50 back to workable conditions before the Hokage let him off the hook, and he wasn’t even responsible for the destruction of 50, it just happened to also catch fire after 49 did.

He spent that month training endlessly with Hayate-san and working on his shape transformation so that when Kakashi-sensei came back he could paralyze his whole body with one hit.

He doesn’t quite manage that, but he does make Kakashi-sensei’s face go numb, and he sends pins and needles down his right arm.

Technically, Sasuke is also not allowed to go to the Chūnin Exams in Iwa when they come around six months later.

Technically, Sasuke is a ninja.

He counts it as his own first test when he joins up with the Konoha delegation and none of the jōnin notice him coming until it’s far too late to send him back on his own.

Kakashi-sensei smirks at him, ruffles his hair, and says “It’s a good thing Hinata-chan decided to sit this one out for the sake of her Clan duties, huh? Three man teams are a requirement for the Chūnin Exams. Don’t get stolen by Orochimaru or I’ll be very disappointed.”

Sasuke scowls and does not thank his jōnin-sensei for preemptively making sure he was not declared a missing-nin by the government.

Sakura looks thrilled to see him, and also not remotely surprised. Sasuke is glad to see her settled into her skin some more than when they first started out, because without Naruto there to fill out their team, he will be forced to rely on her more. She was deep into her apprenticeship during the Suna exams, the only other genin from their year not to go. They haven’t had much opportunity to train together in the last few months, but these days she moves surely and swiftly, burgeoning confidence strengthening her spine, steadying her steps.

“I didn’t want to do this without at least one of you,” Sakura says that night at camp, heading ever deeper into the Land of Earth. The trees of their homeland have fallen behind, and the mountains keep climbing up. It feels unnatural to camp in between rocks instead of tree trunks. “It’s bad enough without Naruto in the village, it just felt wrong to leave you behind.”

“Kakashi-sensei knew I was coming, didn’t he?”

Sakura smiles coyly, closed-lipped. “He might have told me to keep an eye out.”

____________

Iwagakure is the first other Hidden Village he’s ever seen. There are very few Konoha genin there that he knows, what with the relationship between Iwa and Konoha barely tenable as it is, but as many jōnin as the village could afford without offending their tenuous hosts. Sasuke and Sakura are signed up to be on a team with Rock Lee, while Kiba joins Ino and Choji as their third. The other genin are several years older than them, and while Sasuke recognizes some of them, he really hadn’t bothered learning any of their names.

The air is thin up in the mountains. Sasuke stares at the village structures rising out of the stone, wondering if they were built using Doton techniques or carved out of the living rock. Maybe they were built by hand, one rock stacked on top of another, until a whole village was assembled piece by piece. The mountains rise around them on all sides, framing the village with its many walkways and hanging paths. Small waterfalls ghost down from the cave structures in the mountain range behind the Tsuchikage’s office, giving the air a constant heavy humidity that makes it even harder to breathe. 

Every path hangs suspended over a chasm that drops into full darkness beneath them. The rope bridges are worn with time, but strong, constantly kept in top condition. The wind comes over the mountain ridges and fills the bowl in which the village lies, swirling around them and between the buildings in a constant stream so that the walkways swing, ever so gently, all the time, just a little, back and forth.

Lee proposes a climbing contest. Green Leotard-sensei is horrifyingly enthusiastic about it. Kakashi-sensei smacks the idea down, and then smacks Green Leotard-sensei, and then somehow they’re engaged in a genuine cat fight, right in the middle of enemy territory.

Sakura can’t seem to look away. 

Sasuke wants to look literally anywhere else. 

Lee keeps score.

____________

The first test is a written one, set up in the lowest level of the Iwa academy. Even at the lowest level, the windows all open onto a seemingly infinite drop, and looking upwards, the nearest windows on the surrounding towers are at least fifty feet above their heads. The light is very dim down there, supplemented by phosphorescent crystals and sharp green electricity, and the rock and stone buildings are very strange and unnerving. 

Despite the fire hazards, everything in Konoha is made of wood, spackled over with plaster in the contemporary style, or shoji in the traditional. The air is dry and fresh, and although the village was born from the Shodaime’s Mokuton, everything can be rebuilt by hand, and there is always some construction project happening or other.

Inside these stone structures, the air is even damper than outside, and it is _cold_ under all that rock.

The test is, a little disconcertingly, based around battlefield tactics, rather than infiltration, protection, and general four man squad techniques. 

Sasuke, Sakura, and Lee make eye contact across the eerie exam room. Their task from Konoha’s perspective is to demonstrate enough skill to show sufficient prowess for the more demanding role of chūnin, as well as any makings of leadership. From Iwa’s perspective, it’s a test of how much they trust their tentative allies after generations of war only recently surrendered. They must be clever enough to impress, not too strong to offend, open enough to show trust, and closed-lipped enough to keep village secrets.

It’s a delicate balance and Sasuke is struck by the thought that he’s equally relieved and disappointed that Naruto isn’t here to take part. He’d probably start a riot.

____________

The survival mission of the second test takes them deep into the mountain caves, into pitch-black winding tunnels and water traps, and then deeper, where small sight-blind creatures skitter in the darkness, and keeping track of their path becomes life or death. 

They go in with two matching Fire tokens, and have to arrive at the Vault with one each of the five Elements. Genin from the Five Great Nations get their according element, those from the smaller villages are assigned theirs randomly.

Katon techniques draws other genin teams in by the swarms, so they operate primarily in darkness. Sound echoes, bouncing off the walls in disorientating ways, until it’s nearly impossible to tell where another team is except by chakra sensing.

Sasuke keeps his Sharingan on near constantly for four days to see in the black, recording every twist and turn, and his chakra is spread wide to keep track of where the teams are around them. He eats twice as much as either Sakura or Lee to make up the energy drain, and every time they beat another team of genin, he steals their food too. 

With his physical prowess, Lee is the most silent of the lot of them, even with chakra-enhanced steps, provided he doesn’t let his excitement get away from him. He learns to obey Sasuke’s spoken guidance in the darkness, creeping up on their adversaries and knocking them out based purely on what Sasuke can tell him about the layout and positioning of their opponents. He runs in blind and trusting, without an ounce of hesitation. Once he’s on them, his enthusiastic shouting is a great disorientation technique.

Sasuke’s Raiton _devastates_ the Iwa genin. Apparently word spreads among the Doton users, until multiple teams gang up on them at once to try and take him and his Chidori shape transformation techniques out. His mother’s sword is bright and alive in his hands, blue light flaring and crackling as he cuts through their earth jutsu, shreds their defences, and paralyzes their arms and legs.

Sakura is at a disadvantage with her brutal chakra-laden fighting style in these tight, narrow corridors under who knows how many tonnes of rock. Thankfully this gives her plenty of time to study their surroundings and discover the pattern of the tunnels based on Sasuke’s descriptions, the distinction between the Doton-carved and the water-trickle worn. 

As soon as they have their tokens she leads them unerringly in and down. 

Sasuke thinks he’s hallucinating when he starts to see tiny specks of green in his vision, but they gradually become more and more frequent, until the ceiling of the cave they’re following is carpeted in a layer of bioluminescent glow worms. Fragile strands of pale silk dangle down above their heads, beads of moisture refracting the light, like a sea of stars just within reach.

The tunnel opens up into the Vault, an enormous underground cavern almost five stories deep, lit up with the eerie blue-green of bioluminescence and Iwa’s yellow-green electricity. Black water pools at the bottom, smooth and still as glass, reflecting all the light back up and turning a thousand points of light into infinity. There are passage openings all over the cave walls, and Doton carved steps spiraling down from them to meet the surface of the underground lake.

Their steps ripple across the waters surface, sparks beneath their feet.

In the center rises an island, where their proctors wait.

____________

Kakashi-sensei gives him a pat on the head, rubbing all the grime of four days underground into his scalp.

____________

They have a month’s rest between the second test and the third. The Konoha genin are not allowed to wander the village freely, and Sasuke is put under an extra watch because of the whole left-the-village-against-orders, Orochimaru’s-still-out-there thing. 

Kakashi-sensei seems to derive an unholy amount of glee in giving his jōnin guard orders to never let Sasuke out of his sight. Hyōsuke-san takes it to heart, and as far as Sasuke can tell, doesn’t blink the entire month. Every time Sasuke turns around to check, the man’s wide almond eyes are fixed on him. 

Sasuke and Sakura spar together in the enclosed arenas set up for the visiting genin, and Sasuke’s acrobatics are put to the test in evading Sakura’s relentless taijutsu. She’s not as fast as he is, but she is powerful and clever enough to drive him into disadvantageous positions more often than he likes. All she needs to do is land one blow and the fight is over, so Sasuke doesn’t let her. He spends so much time avoiding getting hit that it takes serious effort to turn the tables and strike back.

Lee finally goes on his climbing expedition with Green Leotard-sensei, baffling the Iwa nin who were assigned to watch them. Unexpectedly, this leads to a bonding moment between Kakashi-sensei and the very confused Iwa jōnin as they watch the hollering green Konoha nin vanish into the depths.

____________

In the market with Hyōsuke-san, a centralized open-air plaza ringed with stone railings and crisscrossing rope bridges, Sasuke sees a red patterned block print out of the corner of his eye, outlined in white on a black field.

He turns to look.

Sasuke reaches for his eyepatch before he can stop himself because he has never seen that man before with his good eye. 

He is moving through the crowds, crossing the market from one walkway to another, a similarly dressed shinobi moving silently at his side. He stands a head and shoulders taller than almost everyone else in the market, his small eyes sharp and pale above the high collar of his black cloak, peering out from under his straw hat.

Sasuke stares at Hoshigaki Kisame as he passes by, real, present, and in the flesh, people moving around him who don’t want to be in the way of such an unnerving presence, until Hyōsuke-san puts a hand on his shoulder. As Sasuke is pulled away, Hoshigaki turns a little, a bell chiming on the edge of his hat, and meets Sasuke’s eye. His grin is wide and arrogant and full of sharp, sharp teeth.

“What is Akatsuki doing in Iwagakure? I thought they were all missing-nin?” Sasuke asks Hyōsuke-san after he’s been dragged behind a market stall, and Hoshigaki and his partner have moved past them.

Hyōsuke-san, who has up until this point been fairly stoic and non-communicative, hums, and stares at Sasuke with his wide, dark eyes. “As an organization, they operate in a very similar way to the Hidden Villages, albeit on a smaller scale. They act as mercenaries, take missions from civilians, those living outside the Hidden Villages, and sometimes from the villages themselves. Iwa in particular, has made use of them with some regularity. The organization’s greater goals are not, generally speaking, common knowledge, and very few people know the history of its members.” Hyōsuke-san’s face does that ghoulish contraction where his eyes get extra big and his mouth widens, and the shadows creep deeper around his features. Sasuke shudders, inching backwards. “Don’t attract their attention, Sasuke-kun. Orochimaru was a sometimes acquaintance of theirs in the past, and my orders are to ‘not let you get stolen by any snake-men,’ according to Kakashi-senpai. I don’t intend to fail.” 

He looms.

“Fine, alright? I get it.” Sasuke tactically retreats another step or two. He looks back at where Hoshigaki disappeared, trying to catch another glimpse of the man, but he is long gone, and the crowds have closed in behind him.

____________

Sasuke forgot that the Kages of participating villages are invited to the third test.

Tsunade-sama gives him a _very pointed look_ from the Kage’s box, and Brother is standing right behind her also giving him a _very pointed look_. Shizune-san looks like she’s trying not to laugh or panic, and seems to be failing at both.

Sasuke pretends he has never met any of them in his entire life.

____________

At the tournament, Sasuke’s first opponent mocks his eyepatch, says if he’s this disfigured at thirteen, he won’t live long enough to become a chūnin.

He’s a Doton user. 

Sasuke destroys him with relish, gets him paralyzed and down on the ground, steps on his back to keep him there even though he doesn’t need to. He leans in and smirks down at the piece of shit until the proctor calls the match.

His second opponent, a Fuuton user, knows better than to underestimate him, strikes fast and hard and keeps it up relentlessly. After a month spent training with Sakura though, Sasuke has a very good grasp on the delicate balance of attacking while evading, of moving constantly and slipping behind defences. He doesn’t bother with Raiton, and instead makes tiger seal after tiger seal, using his opponents jutsu against her and ignites the stadium in a very traditional display of Uchiha firepower. 

For a full year, Sasuke has been pacing the confines of Konoha, a tiger in a cage sick to death of feeling trapped. 

A year spent training on his own, pushing himself against imagined opponents and too-far ideals, striving desperately for the chance to prove himself. New weapons and new techniques and new teachers, throwing himself at barriers imposed on him by the Hokage, by his family, by himself of what he can and cannot do. 

The third and final round pits him against an older genin from Kumogakure, another Raiton user with several more years practical experience than him. Sasuke is fighting his most desperate, exhausted by two rounds of combat, scraping at the last dregs of his chakra reserve. His head is throbbing from his Sharingan, his entire body is coated in dust and small stinging cuts from rock shards blasted across the battlefield. The fight goes on for almost thirty minutes before they’re both panting, braced on opposite sides of the arena, trying to scrounge up the strength to attack again, and the proctor calls a draw.

Sasuke finally looks up at the Kage’s box. Brother is watching him, arms crossed, a proud little smile curling his lips.

The Hokage has a similar look on her face, but it’s several times more smug, and she’s directing it to the Tsuchikage, who appears to be very faintly smoking.

____________

The trip back to Konohagakure becomes a week long stealth training mission as Sasuke does his very best to avoid being caught by the Hokage. As long as they’re on the road, Tsunade-sama has better things to do than hunt down one wayward genin and beat the shit out of him, but he knows that he’ll pay for it eventually. His final showing at the tournament went a long way towards making up for his, really quite bad, infraction of leaving the village, ambushing the Konoha delegation, strong-arming himself into the Chūnin Exams, and wreaking havoc on the Iwa genin, but that won’t stop the Hokage.

Hyōsuke-san is still trailing him constantly. Sasuke can never seem to hide well enough for Hyōsuke-san not to find him, and the man doesn’t bother concealing himself at all, he just stands outside of Sasuke’s hiding spots and stares at him. 

Kakashi-sensei thinks it’s hilarious. Sometimes he wanders over and they have quiet conversations about nothing at all as far as Sasuke can tell, which sort of makes him think they’re speaking in code. Maybe they’re just dull. Adults are like that sometimes.

____________

Brother has a gift for him, once he gets back from being formally reprimanded by the Hokage.

Having Mother’s katana during the exams was like having her at his back always. It was Brother, standing by his side, and Father watching over him when he slept. 

He felt safe wielding it.

The sword that Brother gives to him makes him feel invincible. 

It’s a chokutō, not quite like the one he sees in his left eye, but better because it’s _his_. Straight edged and sharp as a dragon’s tooth, fine silvery layers flashing as it twists in the light. It’s long, long enough for him to keep growing, as he seems to be doing endlessly. 

It channels lightning chakra like a dream.

Brother calls it _Ame-no-Murakumo_.

“I was thinking to give it to you for your birthday,” he says, leaning back against the porch, as Sasuke moves through a kata in the garden, stepping sure and testing the weight of Murakumo. “But then Mother found your note.”

Sasuke tries not to falter in his swing. He had almost forgotten to leave the note, but the thought of the retribution that would come down on him if he had simply vanished without a word had him turning around, bag already on his back, to scribble something out. It was not his best work.

Brother smirks at him.

“Hokage-sama was very pleased with your performance. Father was as well.”

Sasuke stops. “He heard?” 

Sasuke hadn’t wanted to bring it up, especially the last fight to the draw with the Kumo genin. He’s already been grounded like a child, in addition to being confined to the village. It’s not like he does much besides work and train, but now he’s on house chore duty for a month, gardening and weeding, sweeping and replacing all the tatami, sharpening weapons for the whole household. He’s supposed to come home immediately after training with Kakashi-sensei, so he has to do his kenjutsu in the garden.

“I showed him,” says Brother.

The idea of his father watching him fight through his brother’s eyes makes Sasuke feel very unsteady. He doesn’t know what to think about it.

“Mother was furious,” he says instead. 

Brother raises an eyebrow. “Sasuke. Of course she is.”

Sasuke bows his head sheepishly. Mother and Father had both yelled when he got home, escorted all the way up to the front door by Brother, Hyōsuke-san, and Kakashi-sensei lagging behind them. He is an adult by shinobi standards, and when accompanied by a jōnin-sensei should theoretically be able to take care of himself outside the village, but none of that made a dent in Mother’s fury. It was the first time she had ever given Sasuke the silent treatment, and it has been all the more devastating for it.

Still, even with the chores and the punishments and the Hokage reinforcing his village-restrictions, Sasuke wouldn’t change a thing.

____________

“Do you want to move in with me, Sasuke? Now that you’re a chūnin, it would be nice to have some more independence.”

Sasuke nicks his finger on the shuriken he’s sharpening. He sucks his bleeding finger into his mouth, and looks up at Brother.

Brother smiles ruefully. “Once you’re done your chores of course, little brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sasuke why are you always covered in dirt
> 
> i love all you baby goats the best


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmmmmmmmmm this is some blackkat nonsense that i am not qualified for oh well! here we go

Becoming a chūnin means learning to become a leader. Unfortunately, he’s _stuck in the village_ so there are no team leading opportunities besides _more D-ranks_ when the jōnin-sensei don’t feel like dealing with their genin brats.

Sasuke has some self-respect. He’s not a genin anymore and he doesn’t have to put up with that nonsense.

His petition to join the Intelligence squad has been pending for two months, and he knows for a fact that it’s more of Tsunade-sama’s punishment for the Chūnin Exam. Apparently she likes it when he’s irritated enough to eat his own hair. Some of the other opportunities are Academy Teacher’s Assistant, which makes him want to set himself on fire, Front Gate Duty, which just highlights the fact that he can’t leave the village, and Mission Desk, which is at least lets him learn about the different capabilities of Konoha shinobi, most of whom he’s never met and hasn’t heard of. It’s interesting to see how the missions are put together, and how often the squads have to be rearranged in order to accommodate a mission’s parameters versus who is available to take it. 

Learning about the process certainly explains the shit-show that was his first C-rank a year and a half ago.

Sometimes Iruka-sensei works the Mission Desk, whenever the Academy isn’t in session. Shikamaru comes and loafs around when he’s avoiding his other responsibilities, and hangs out the window backwards while judging Sasuke’s mediocre shogi skills. He’ll leave and visit Sakura at the hospital on their lunch breaks, and they’ll sit on the roof and speculate about what kind of shenanigans Naruto has been up to. 

Every single active-duty Uchiha, the ones working as mission-ready shinobi instead of KMPF, ruffles his hair when they come through, from Aunt Yuri to cousin Keiko. He knows their names, Father had made sure of that, but he doesn’t _know_ any of them, really. They’re all a lot more unrestrained than he expects from them as they pass through, chuckling and asking about his work, and his life, and how he likes living with Brother, and all sorts of things that would get them frowned at by the Elders. Sasuke flushes bright red and shoves their stupid hands out of his already messy hair, desperately flattening cowlicks, as the other shinobi at the Mission Desk laugh behind their paperwork. They had looked just as surprised as Sasuke had been the first time, but now it’s a source of amusement for anyone who passes through at the right moment.

Unfortunately Tsunade-sama is often there too, causing a ruckus and trying to reassign the higher-level missions, picking on her least favorite genin with the worst D-ranks, and making fun of Sasuke with Kakashi-sensei, who miraculously seems to find the time to drop in and harass him, even though he sees Sasuke almost every day and is still late to every single training session.

The point is, he hears about the attack first, working there.

The chūnin who comes in to deliver his report looks pale, damaged, and exhausted. His mission scroll is filled out, but the hand is so shaky that it’s almost impossible to read. Iruka-sensei, a kind and concerned soul when he’s not been irritated past his limits, rushes around the desk to hold the chūnin up, and passes the report to Sasuke to copy out on a fresh scroll. 

By the time Iruka-sensei returns from seeing Tohru-san to the hospital, Sasuke is frowning at the re-written report and shuffling through other documents, leaving them scattered about the desk in disarray.

“What are you looking for, Sasuke-kun?”

“Anything else based in Ame, or the Land of Rain,” Sasuke says, pulling out a sheaf of incomplete missions, and flipping through them. “There’s something about this attack. It was just a courier mission, why would they be ambushed by missing-nin? It’s just like that mission to the Land of Waves. Either the client was lying about the mission, or there’s something else going on in Amegakure.” He scowls. “Or both.”

Iruka-sensei comes around the desk and frowns over Sasuke’s shoulder. 

“Ame hasn’t been really steady since the civil war that broke out a few years ago, but it’s never posed a threat to its neighbors like this. Either way, if there are any other missions in or around the Land of Rain, they need to be warned if they don’t know already,” he mutters. He retreats slightly, and picks up another set of scrolls to scan through. “We need to alert Godaime-sama, and Tohru-san will have to give a more detailed report when he wakes up. I’ll also keep an eye out for unclaimed missions in the area, see if I can’t find anything related to the attack.” He stops, forehead creased, staring at the rewritten mission scroll. His nose wrinkles, pulling at his scar. “Wait. Four missing-nin, jōnin-level or higher?”

Sasuke levels a look at Iruka-sensei from under his bangs. “Akatsuki.”

Iruka-sensei visibly jolts. “What do you know about the Akatsuki?”

Sasuke shrugs and unrolls three more scrolls, skimming them for location details. “I saw Hoshigaki Kisame in Iwagakure. I recognized him. Hyōsuke-san told me a little more about them.”

Iruka-sensei squints his eyes and mouths the name to himself, but eventually shakes his head. “That’s not something you should know about, Sasuke-kun. The Akatsuki is a very dangerous group and Hokage-sama has ANBU on high-alert running classified missions dealing with them. It’s not for you to concern yourself with.”

“I can help,” Sasuke snarls. “In this, at least, I can help.” He is _stuck_, he was the number one rookie as a genin, he is the number one rookie as a chūnin for all that’s worth, he’s an _Uchiha_, and he mastered his second nature transformation in a year. He’s strong and smart and _he is stagnating_. All he can do is look at some damned scrolls and Iruka-sensei sure as hell isn’t going to stop him.

There are two other missions that intersect the Land of Rain, one a jōnin-sensei and her genin team deployed as a merchant convoy escort from the Land of Rock to the Land of Waterfalls, the other an espionage detail to discover the root cause of some new obstruction to trading ventures in Ame. There are also an alarming number of new protection mission requests all just recently submitted in the yet-to-be-sorted pile, merchants and travellers trying to make their way through the Land of Rain with unprecedented levels of paranoia for the area.

“The situation in Ame is destabilizing,” Sasuke reports to the Hokage, standing as tall as he can in his too-stiff chūnin flak jacket. He hasn’t had much of a chance to break it in, and it’s very obvious. The neckline rubs against his collarbones but he doesn’t want to slouch in front of Brother, standing just to the left of Shizune-san. “Based on the mission requests, the unrest is accelerating. People don’t feel safe, and it looks like the Akatsuki or another band of missing-nin is taking advantage of a recent power upheaval to poach missions, harass civilians into racketeering schemes, even robbing caravans like common bandits. Jōnin-sensei Shoko-san and her genin team, and chūnin squad team leader Tsumugi-san need back up, or they’ll end up like Tohru-san’s team.”

Iruka-sensei stands just behind him and to the right, a silent support and not too subtle sign of vouching for his involvement. Sasuke can see him out of the corner of his eye making very tiny excited movements with his hands, probably involuntary, and this is probably why Iruka-sensei is not known for his infiltration techniques. He’s visibly proud that Sasuke is reporting his findings to the Hokage. 

It’s disorienting at best.

Sasuke feel his ears get hot.

Tsunade-sama frowns, her hands clasped in front of her chin, as she listens to his report. Sasuke had brought all the relevant files in from the Mission Office, which was a lot, and there wasn’t really enough room on her paperwork-laden desk to put them, so some of them are on the desk, and he’s still holding some, and Iruka-sensei had to step in and catch a few when they seemed like they would fall.

“This is a very busy season for us,” she says, her unlined face creasing prettily, and impermanently. “Amegakure is not the only village facing unexpected instability, which has redirected a lot of traffic towards Konohagakure. Almost all of our jōnin are on missions, and we don’t have sufficient chūnin available to make a team to send after Shoko-sensei and Tsumugi. Another genin team will be a disaster in the making, and a messenger hawk won’t make it the distance, not if there’s as much trouble as you say.” She glares at Sasuke as if he’s personally responsible for the disruption of standard village procedures. This is not his fault, this time.

This is his chance. Sasuke takes a deep breath. “Hokage-sama,” he starts, channelling Brother as best he can. “There have been no reported sightings of Orochimaru or his followers for eleven months, and no attempted attacks in sixteen. Let me go with Kakashi-sensei and a team of chūnin. I am more than capable.” He shuffles his scrolls. “And I know Kakashi-sensei isn’t doing anything useful.”

That makes Tsunade-sama smirk. 

Sasuke tries not to look at where Brother is frowning at him. He’s moving his fingers down by his hip, but if Sasuke doesn’t look at it then he can't see Brother scolding him, and therefore it’s not his fault when he ignores him.

There is a long drawn out staring contest between the Hokage, Sasuke, his brother, and Kakashi-sensei, who Sasuke can feel lurking outside the window like he’s got nothing better to do with his time, before the Hokage says yes.

Brother does not look pleased.

____________

Dinners with Mother and Father are better now that Sasuke doesn’t live with them. There is a degree of separation that Sasuke is not used to, but it makes sharing stories more interesting, more exciting to tell Mother about his days at the Mission Desk, and more rewarding to tell Father about his training with Kakashi-sensei. He can pick and choose what to say, and he doesn’t feel compelled to recount the whole day’s events, when he only sees them once or twice a week.

It had felt unnatural, saying goodbye and moving in with Brother, getting a new futon for the small second bedroom, moving all his clothes and equipment into the downtown apartment. 

It wasn’t like going on a mission, or if it was, it was one of those long-term postings that Sasuke has never experienced, like moving to Sunagakure all the way across the desert. Sasuke had to go through his things, sort out his toys from when he was a little kid and separate them from his training gear, from his mission gear. He didn’t have much by way of non-useful equipment, but he had accumulated a lot of out-grown clothes, and tiny knick-knacks from all his stupid D-rank missions that he had to make decisions about. 

The things that had caught his attention in a moment looked a lot more like weird clutter when he tried to sort it, small interesting rocks, lost dog tags, tiny notes left in library books, small broken pieces of jewelry lost in among trash in the river, but he found he couldn’t throw it all away. Someone had cared at some point, about all of these things. Well, maybe not the rocks, but one of them had an impression that looked just like the spiral emblem on Brother’s flak jacket, so Sasuke liked it.

He was just doing what Kakashi-sensei had said. He isn’t allowed to go outside the village, so he has to find things inside to care about.

Mother keeps his room, just like she keeps Brother’s, and the tiny shelf of his weird collection sits untouched except by the afternoon sun, coming in through the windows.

Sasuke likes living with Brother. In some ways it’s very much like living on his own, as Brother is just as busy now as he was when he lived with Mother and Father. Sasuke puts his eyepatch with his mission gear and walks around the house full-sighted, appreciating the way the light from the windows reflects off the kitchen counter, and the subtle depth to Brother’s houseplants, backlit and vibrant green. He still has to keep it on hand for when cousin Shisui comes to visit, hopping up onto the window sill and knocking over the same spider plant every time, relentlessly. Sasuke refuses to move it, and Shisui refuses to learn better, and it’s a stalemate that only the spider plant suffers from.

Brother doesn’t get home until late most nights, but they sit at the kotatsu in the dark and talk over tea. It’s the most time Sasuke has spent with his brother in years, accumulated over pale mornings and cool, dark evenings.

In some ways, Brother is actually a terrible roommate because he’s incredibly overbearing and makes Sasuke do most of the chores, based on Itachi working for the Hokage and Sasuke working part-time at best, but Sasuke is willing to put up with a great deal to spend time with his brother. He clunks around, resentfully washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom, making dinner in a huff, irritated up until the very moment when Brother comes home, and Sasuke is delighted to see him all over again.

Except also his brother is a rat.

____________

Mother is also not pleased.

“Sasuke, I _will not have you_ in danger like this,” Mother’s eyes flash and her face takes on the stern countenance of an Uchiha Elder who will not be disobeyed. Once her’s and Father’s generation takes up the mantel, she will rule the clan with an iron fist. “I understand your frustrations, but Orochimaru is still out there and if he tries to come after you again I will _kill him myself_ before I let him have you.”

Mother has not been on a battlefield in eighteen years, whatever missions she takes as tokubetsu-jōnin are espionage and diplomacy first and foremost. Sasuke knows she can fight, he wielded her katana himself, and she would have to, to use a sword like that. 

He has never ever seen his mother this ready to kill. Deep inside, in the same parts of him that cry out for Itachi when he’s scared and trying to pretend he’s not, where _family_ and _clan_ mean _safety_ more than anything else, he believes she would do it.

“And I will break both your legs before I let you run off again,” she finishes, crossing her arms in a this-discussion-is-over pose.

Sasuke also believes she can do that too.

He turns, a little desperately, to his father.

Father just shakes his head, solemnly.

“Mother,” Brother cuts in, unexpectedly, his voice quiet and deferential. He’s the one who made Sasuke come to dinner tonight anyway, he’s supposed to leave in the morning and Brother just had to cart Sasuke off to face Mother’s judgement, like he didn’t know exactly how mad she’d be. “These are Hokage-sama’s orders. There are no other options available at this time, and time is of the essence with this mission. The team leaves at first light and Sasuke will not be on his own.”

Mother is not having it. “How can you be so calm? Where will you be, while your brother is thrown into danger like this? This is unacceptable, he only just got back from the last time!”

Brother’s face shutters, and Mother looks ashamed. “I have my own tasks, Mother, as we all do. Sasuke’s team is ordered to alert and support the teams in the field, not engage with anyone else directly. They will not be gone for long.”

Although she’s still furious, there is really nothing Mother can do to change it. Sasuke has his orders and the Hokage signed off on them, and since she was the one to originally ban him from leaving, she has full authority to reinstate him. Mother and Father are both too busy to take a week-long mission to Ame, Father with the increased activity at the KMPF with so many missions happening at once and shinobi moving in and out of the village in quick succession, and Mother with the Clan elders, who are once again stirring up trouble with the Hyuuga clan. The rest of the clan is the same, as is the rest of the village.

This is Sasuke’s chance. He will not fail.

And this time, he even has permission.

____________

The jōnin captain Kakashi-sensei adds to their team introduces himself as Yamato. 

Sasuke squints at him. His hair has been cut short, sticking up all over his head not down to his shoulders, and the happuri-style forehead protector is a different color, but it’s clearly Hyōsuke-san, with the wide almond eyes and the looming presence. It’s only been a few months, he’s not sure if they thought he wouldn’t recognize him.

Hyōsuke-san smiles at him, closed-lipped, and then he does that thing with his face. “You may call me Yamato-san, Sasuke-kun.”

Sasuke nods. He will call him Yamato-san.

Tenten watches curiously, her knapsack on her shoulders and her weapon scrolls at her hips.

With two jōnin and two chūnin, Team Kakashi isn’t the usual four-man squad, but it was what Tsunade-sama could scrape together for this mission with enough independence and fighting power to split if they need to. They leave the village at dawn, running north through the trees.

____________

Shoko-san’s genin team is beaten to hell when they catch up with them, but the convoy they’re protecting is still moving, and more or less intact. They survived mostly by way of Shoko-san’s genjutsu expertise hiding the extent of the convoy from the missing-nin running rampant in the area, but it took a while to fend off the first surprise attack just across the border from the Land of Rock. They’re dead lucky that it was a random faction of rogue Ame nin that targeted them instead of Akatsuki, but that in itself is an unsettling revelation. The problem is on the worse end of Sasuke’s expectations, based on the mission requests.

She takes the update with a sour, pinched look, and turns her eyes to her genin team with a thin thread of worry snaking through her chakra. 

“I knew something wasn’t right, Konoha’s standing isn’t that bad off with Ame that their shinobi would attack us so openly just passing through the country,” she says under her breath to Team Kakashi, huddled together against the pounding drum-rattle of rain. The genin team is soggy and miserable where they stand in defensive formation around the convoy. They must be from the most recent graduating class, because they look like little kids even to Sasuke.

“Were they missing-nin?” asks Kakashi-sensei sharply, hearing something in Shoko-san’s words.

She shakes her head, her heavy wet hair slapping against her brown face. “Their forehead protectors were intact. If they had gone rogue they did it very recently, or they’re still affecting loyalty. I couldn’t tell, honestly.”

Hyōsuke— Yamato-san coughs delicately into his fist, and raises his voice to be heard over the rain. “I believe a more northerly route wouldn’t go amiss at this point. It’ll take longer, but we didn’t run into trouble until we crossed the border. Crossing through Earth will probably be better for you in the long run.” They had dodged two mis-matched groups on patrol, looking vicious and unbalanced, and had observed from a distance as they had nearly clashed with each other. Conflicting orders, maybe?

“What will you do?” Shoko-san asks, already moving. She gestures her closest genin closer and gives the new orders. Tenten takes off with him, passing them along to the other two genin and the caravan drivers. It’s strange to be in the position of experienced senpai, a reassuring presence to impressionable youths. 

Kakashi-sensei fields that one, somehow managing to look bored even while soaked to the skin in enemy territory, his mask so wet it’s dripping from his chin. “We have another team to find closer to Amegakure. If you need additional escort, this is the time to ask for it, we can split off.” If they split, Sasuke will go with Yamato-san, and Tenten will go with Kakashi-sensei. Sasuke doesn’t know Yamato-san’s fighting style yet, but when there’s enough Sharingan to go around, it’s standard practice to spread them out. 

Shoko-san deliberates on that for long enough that they know she’s really thinking through the repercussions, not just denying them off hand in misguided arrogance. She frowns, watching her young crew reroute the convoy, setting them on their new path and checking their direction against their compass, and shakes her head. “We’ll be fine. They’re strong kids, and they’re learning their teamwork well. I think they can handle it if we get out of Rain quickly enough.”

Kakashi-sensei sends them off with one of his ninken anyway, as Sasuke and Yamato-san and Tenten head towards Amegakure, squelching all the way.

____________

They track Tsumugi-san’s team down to an inn just inside Amegakure’s civilian district. They couldn’t get into Ame legally without passports, but the village hasn’t been responding to visa requests for days, so they are all posing as civilians fleeing the missing-nin activity outside. Kakashi-sensei in particular seems to relish the costume drama of it, and is deeply immersed in his role as a lazy farmer on involuntary vacation.

In the years before, civilians had been few and far between inside Amegakure, political upheaval and high-level shinobi conflicts driving them outside into safer pastures, but the tables have turned in the last week, and the puddled streets are crowded and uncertain.

Inside the inn, the sound of rain beating against the tin roof is not quite drowned out by the sound of people talking over each other, yelling back and forth.

Tsumugi-san’s team had only just made it into the village before the unrest really kicked off. They have been watching their backs for days, unwilling to risk the trek back to Konoha with so many conflicting reports coming from the actual civilians flooding the village. The obstruction they had come to investigate, some unexpected new resistance towards established trading routes, has become both obvious and significantly more complicated, given the circumstances. Whatever it is is directly related to the unrest, but what caused that is still unknown. Ame nin aren’t talking about it, but the local civilians are gossiping non-stop, throwing out rumors from the Lady Angel killing the last Lord in defence of her secret illegitimate child, to a demon come into town to possess the village elders and bring their defences down. 

The one Sasuke keeps thinking about though, is the one about the old Sage and his young apprentice who came to end the wars and fight injustice. Sasuke wants to bang his head against a table, because if that wasn’t Naruto, come and gone maybe a week before if the rumors are right, than he’s going to eat Kakashi-sensei’s stupid farmer’s hat. He’s clearly responsible for all the nonsense that’s cropped up in Ame, the Ame nin running around not knowing who to follow, the missing-nin taking advantage of the chaos, and the Akatsuki apparently going even more rogue than usual.

Sasuke sidles up to Kakashi-sensei, a young farm hand to his master, and tells him this.

Kakashi-sensei cackles, and leans back in his seat, chewing on a piece of straw _through_ the folds of his scarf.

“Heh, getting to work, huh? Why am I surprised. Well, well now, if that’s the case, our work here is done,” he says, a previously held tension slipping in his shoulders, leaving him even more loosely sprawled than before. He very nearly looks like he might slip off his seat and under the table if he relaxes any farther. “Sasuke-kun, I want confirmation on those rumors, and then we’ll see about escorting Team Tsumugi home.”

Sasuke slips through the crowd, tamping down his own chakra signature as he seeks out that of the civilian who had boasted about meeting the Sage himself, tiny and candle-like, but unique all the same. He finds the man and argues specifics with him. 

Sasuke had heard the boy was Lady Angel’s apprentice, not some strangers, what, are you an idiot, then where did they come from? Did you see them? 

How do you know they were wanderers, there are so many strangers in town these days. It happened before the chaos, you say? And after they left, Lady Angel made an announcement, but that was about her secret child, yes it was, I heard all about it. 

_Rain will part from the Red Dawn and seek a true world of Peace_? She said that? Exactly that? Huh.

Yeah, and the boy in orange, of course, standing up and calling to fight for what they believe in.

Yeah, no wonder those black-cloaked bastards are in a tizzy.

____________

Something Sasuke has learned his eye can do is see through henge techniques, even without the Sharingan. It’s hard to look at, like seeing through multiple sheets of paper, lines overlapping and bleeding through the edges, when one person overlaps with another version of themselves. He’s right every time though, has tested it when he’s worked up the nerve to expose his eye and peer out from behind his bangs.

He does it that night at the bar in the inn, slouched in the shadows with Yamato-san, who very carefully does not watch him watch the crowds.

One or two of the civilians ghost into half-sight when he scans the room and he looks away from them quickly. The three henge shadows he spots line up with the chakra signatures he’d noticed before, stronger than civilians even when disguised. He doesn’t recognize any of them off the bat, but he winks his Sharingan on for a moment to memorize their faces so he can revisit them later with a Bingo book.

Only one of them is wearing a black and red cloak under his disguise. He’s extremely creepy, skin milk white and golden eyes staring unblinking into the crowds. He doesn’t move much, and he doesn’t even have a drink in front of him to blend in, he just sits and watches.

He turns his blank gold eyes to Sasuke.

Yamato-san is jostled foreward by a passing drunk, and he steps in front of Sasuke, breaking the man’s line of sight. When he steadies himself, a broad hand on Sasuke’s shoulder pressing him further into the shadows, the man is gone, cleared out without a trace.

____________

Sasuke lights Kakashi-sensei’s stupid hat on fire as soon as they’re out of Amegakure. The jōnin made as if he’d wear it all the way back to Konoha but now he _can’t_. He’s only a little singed, it’s still raining after all.

They actually engage a group of missing-nin on their way back out, not Akatsuki, but not Ame nin either, just free-loaders making profit off other people’s hardship. Team Tsumigi might be infiltration specialists, not front-line fighters like Team Kakashi, but they are Konoha nin, which puts them at a level well above these assholes.

It’s a hard fight, they’re outnumbered two to one, but it doesn’t make a difference. 

Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke’s Chidori shriek in the rain soaked air, Murakumo singing as it sweeps through the enemy’s defences. 

Sasuke has been working on a new trick of shape transformation, but this is the first time he’s really seen it work: it just doesn’t rain like this in Konoha, not on a regular basis. He swings his chokutō, splitting raindrops in its wake, and lightning crackles from the blade’s tip, leaping from one bead of water to the next in the frozen moment of the Sharingan’s red-tinged sight. His chakra races along, dragged by the current, spreading out in a branching pattern, rippling away from him as it leaps the distance between one drop to the next, crackling. It’s a different sound, higher-pitched than the Chidori, an electric buzzing that sounds less like birds and more like insects. The raindrops glow, caught in mid air, suspended on Sasuke’s brilliant blue chakra, and then the paths connect, and three missing-nin go down twitching, caught up in Sasuke’s web of lightning. 

Kakashi-sensei spares a brief moment to clap, a little sardonically, before he knocks out another nin with a clean elbow to the temple. It’s a lot less dramatic, but it’s equally effective.

Tenten wipes out her opponents with wave after wave of weapons meteoring down with the rain, the flash of blades hidden in the shadows of the downpour. She moves in the air like a dancer, spiraling out of the enemy’s way and leaving them tangled up in their own mess in her wake.

Yamato-san’s using _Mokuton_ which actually stops Sasuke in his tracks for a heartbeat, awe rising in his throat. He’s never seen that, has never heard of anyone using it since the Shodaime, and it’s stunning to watch, roots punching out of the ground and dragging nin down, pinning them solidly. Yamato-san is just as agile as his tree branches, twisting and leaping from surface to surface, calling them up to him when he needs them, and then sinking them back down when he’s done.

Tsumugi-san and her teammates don’t use ninjutsu-heavy fighting techniques, but the four of them are clearly well versed in fighting as a team, and they take down their share of the opponents with swift, coordinated techniques.

This time when they cross the border, the Ame nin on patrol let them pass without conflict.

____________

The Hokage closes everyone out of her office except Kakashi-sensei when they get back, but won’t dismiss them, leaving them all milling about in the hallway until the silence seal comes down.

She scowls at all of them, takes their individual reports, and scowls some more. “This is not what I signed up for, Hatake,” she hisses, scribbling things down onto a scroll fit for a messenger hawk. She looks at what she wrote, crumples the letter into a tiny ball, and starts over again. Kakashi-sensei sets the discarded scroll on fire, letting it crumble into ash. 

“Ah, well, we do what we can, don’t we?” Kakashi-sensei simpers at her, his eye creased up into his most irritating smile. “Better than the alternative, I assure you.”

Tsunade-sama scowls and throws her pen at him. He ducks, barely, and the pen barrels through the plaster of her office wall, leaving a narrow hole into the outside world. Someone in the street yelps. Tsunade-sama snaps her fingers and Shizune-san scrambles for a new pen.

They’re eventually dismissed, Tsumugi-san’s team slumping off for a moments rest after several days feeling helpless and trapped in unfriendly territory, and Tsunade-sama calls Sasuke back.

“Next week you begin your assignment as junior staff in the Intelligence Division,” she says with a glare, as if this is a new punishment.

Sasuke freezes. “Yes, ma’am.” 

Tsunade-sama smirks at him. “You can start by reading through Jiraiya’s reports. He’s my best spy master, and his techniques are… unique. I think you’ll learn a lot from them.”

Kakashi-sensei cackles from where he’s lurking outside the window _again_ and Brother, who has been his stoic self through the whole debriefing, smirks wickedly. 

Sasuke would like to go back to walking dogs, actually. He likes picking up trash.

“Also,” Brother adds, “Mother is expecting you tonight.”

Maybe he should just run away forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you’ve heard about ‘sasuke’s weird eye thing’ !! get ready for ‘the rest of the plot’ !!!!!
> 
> i hope u kids are ok w coming on this adventure with me ilu


	6. Chapter 6

Once he figures out what he’s looking for, Sasuke can find mentions of Naruto all throughout Jiraiya’s godawful soft-core pornography masquerading as mission reports. 

It’s a code, of course it’s a code, but it took him an embarrassingly long time to figure that out, since just reading them in the first place makes him want to set them, and then himself, on fire, closely followed by the Hyūga snickering at him from the other side of the room. He has to actually work hard to keep his chakra from igniting the scrolls in front of him, because the only thing worse would be to _accidentally_ set everything on fire and then have to explain to the Hokage why everything was on fire.

Written as a series of scandalous encounters and intimate letters, the sex scenes are largely implicit, but it’s more than enough to set Sasuke blushing brilliantly from the first line until he leaves his shift for the day. He hunches down farther behind his stacks of scrolls every time one of the other chūnin in his department passes by his desk as if he can hide the fact that his whole face is very nearly incandescent.

This is the kind of garbage Kakashi-sensei reads _on purpose_.

Of everyone in their year, Kiba’s the only one who’s been vocal about being a fourteen year old boy, everyone else being too weird, too shy, or way too much a clan kid to ever admit thinking about sex. Well, the girls, maybe. They actually seem to be very self-aware, far more than Sasuke’s ever known what to do with. Naruto and his stupid jutsu might count, but that was more about pranking than about sex, Sasuke’s pretty sure. Probably.

Regardless, none of them will ever find out that he reads porn on the Hokage’s orders, for her express amusement.

The most recent reports are all about a buxom blonde bombshell and a series of wild, untameable, purportedly “thrilling” engagements with just the edge of danger. They’re described from a third party perspective, with a tone of _you-will-not-believe-what-I-just-saw_ that makes Sasuke cringe for all parties involved, and resentfully, guiltily, turn the page waiting for the next reveal.

It’s not until he finds the one where the Foxy Blonde gets caught in a sudden downpour and is forced to seek shelter with Blue Petal and her partner Six Piercings, that he gets it. They have a wild night of enthusiastically negotiated kink, some heartbreaking truths, and a sworn promise to always believe in each other no matter where they end up in life. Six Piercings has been hurt in the past, and he’s not willing to let in new loves, but Foxy Blonde opens up his heart (and his pants) much to the relief of Blue Petal, who has always loved him from a distance. Apparently all he needed was to be “disciplined thoroughly, so he could turn over a new leaf.” Blue Petal shows her (hearty) appreciation to Foxy Blonde, and then tells Six Piercings’ rude friends they are no longer welcome, and a whole new parcel of people rush in at the last minute for a fade-to-black orgy. 

Finally realizing that _Foxy Blonde_ means _Naruto_ is confusing and hurtful. 

It also explains a lot of things in context, like the I Believe in You speeches that keep cropping up in the middle of sex scenes. 

Several of the reports also mention Sly Dog, a recurring character of dashing repute. They don’t seem to actually show up in the stories, but they’re mentioned whenever rumors lead to a juicy new encounter, or a secret lover no one can know about. Whenever there’s a party of scantily clad young women, or a good peeping spot, or an exciting new “friend” of Foxy Blonde’s, Sly Dog is the one pointing the way. Sasuke tries to get his head out of Jiraiya’s terrible perverted metaphors to think of who Sly Dog could be, but it’s hard to disentangle the fiction from reality when his face is as red as a tomato. An Inuzuka, probably, Jiraiya’s pretty on the nose about his nicknames.

Sly Dog told Foxy Blonde where to go for shelter in the rainstorm. 

Sly Dog warned Big Daddy about the beautiful, but deadly, Pale Blossom and how she had secretly replaced her twin sister Desert Flower in order to sneak into his bed, resulting in a rolicking threesome after which, even though Pale Blossom fled into the night ashamed at her duplicity, Desert Flower and Big Daddy stayed on _intimate_ terms. 

Knowing that it’s a code doesn’t help when Sasuke has no idea what the hell Jiraiya’s talking about, or why everything is named after flowers.

____________

Sasuke doesn’t _only_ read Jiraiya’s terrible porn. It’s just the most traumatizing part of his job.

His job in Intelligence Division is mostly receiving and decoding new messages that make their way into the village, delivered from messenger hawks, ninken, summons, and hapless genin sent as couriers. As junior staff, he spends a couple hours every day going through old reports to learn the nuances of different codes. 

Sasuke is excellent at decoding messages. His Sharingan picks out patterns and repetitions and key phrases from one report to the next, memorizing details that lead to revelations he can tell the letter writers haven’t yet figured out. It’s all in the tiny hidden things people don’t always think are important. He’s been getting pretty good at noticing those things, and finds an unexpected relish in highlighting overlooked features.

He has a clearance level now, and a supervisor, Hyūga Isao, and a small team that he works tangentially with. They don’t think much of him, in the way that people who have worked with his brother simultaneously have high expectations and still believe he will never compare. Just like with his father, he is always good enough to surprise them, but never enough to satisfy.

He compiles data, writes his own reports, and creates mission briefs for the Hokage once Isao-san has signed off on his information packets. 

He trains with Kakashi-sensei, when he’s not out of the village on more of his mysterious solo missions, and Hayate-san who has started teaching him more advanced techniques in between coughing bouts, and he goes home to Brother, and he learns how to always keep watching, especially when other people think he’s not looking.

He finds weird mentions about his family, referencing sealed reports he doesn’t have clearance for. He finds Shisui’s ANBU callsign mentioned. Sasuke’s not supposed to know that, but it’s one of the things that slips out in families, especially when Shisui and Brother have been best friends since Sasuke can even remember. He doesn’t have any memory of learning it, it’s just something he’s always known. 

Brother was Crow, Shisui was Seal.

Sasuke doesn’t even need to find the referenced reports to start figuring out what he had been blind to as a child. He just has to look around the blank areas to see the shape they define. 

It’s just like fighting with an eyepatch, adapting to his blind spots, just like Brother taught him.

____________

He doesn’t know how to ask Brother. 

He spends almost a week delaying, reading reports around the Uchiha clan of almost seven years ago, hesitating over dinner, eating slowly so the conversation drags out into meaningless patter.

Brother watches him closely. Sasuke knows he’s not hiding his unease, he’s proven definitively that he can’t hide anything from Brother, but he still doesn’t know what to say.

Thankfully, his brother is just as much of a know-it-all as he has ever been.

“What have you learned, little brother?” he asks one night, having eaten his gyoza without looking away from Sasuke once during dinner. They’re down to shirtsleeves and mesh armor, as bare as shinobi can get in the privacy of their own homes. “Can you tell me?”

Sasuke bites down on his chopsticks and hears something crack. Brother raises an eyebrow.

Sasuke flushes and drops his chopsticks to the table. He looks down at his half-eaten food for a moment, and then he makes the hand-seals for a silence barrier. Chakra crackles outward from him and sluices up the walls in a pale shimmer, boxing them in.

Brother’s other eyebrow slides up.

“Something happened when I was a kid. With the clan. Didn’t it?” Sasuke says, scraping his splintered chopstick across his plate. 

Brother’s face goes blank in that specific way he has where he’s feeling a lot of things and doesn’t want anyone, Sasuke especially, to know them. “I know that’s beyond your clearance level.”

Sasuke scoffs. “I don’t need clearance to figure that much out. I can read between the lines.”

“Then what did you learn?”

“It was right…” Sasuke pauses, and touches his face. He doesn’t have his eyepatch on, so his fingertips brush against the fringes of his own eyelashes. “It was right before this, I remember. Father was always angry. You were angry,” he says in a low voice, looking up at Brother.

Brother nods. He doesn’t say anything.

“I never realized how many people lost their jobs,” he starts. “A lot of us, right around then. There was a surge in hiring at the Military Police Force, everyone on active duty switched over, and there were a lot of reassignments. But Uncle Teyaki and Aunt Uruchi, they used to have a shop in the market, didn’t they? And then they moved into the compound. I didn’t know that.”

Sasuke lists his observations in a slow, steady progression under his brother’s thoughtful gaze. A lot of it is speculation, really, not necessarily stuff he learned, so much as conjecture based on circumstantial evidence. He knows doesn’t it quite count, but it builds a damning picture of the Uchiha clan withdrawing from society steadily for years.

“And then… something changed. I don’t know what.”

Brother inhales through his nose, his dark eyes flicking away. He’s unsure, Sasuke realizes, _unsettled_, and it puts him off balance.

Brother breathes out, a long sigh, and he closes his eyes in a slow blink. He turns them, piercing, solemn, to Sasuke, and Sasuke straightens in response. His brother looks so tired in that moment, the lines of his face drawn in ways that Sasuke has not let himself notice.

“We came very close to destruction,” he says, mourning written in the shadows under his eyes. “So close I don’t like to think of it. We’re still struggling. I fear we might always, but it’s better now. After the Kyūbi attack, we were in a tenuous position. It wasn’t a new phenomenon, the Uchiha have been viewed as volatile since Konohagakure was founded, since Nidaime-sama wrote about our people and our history without our input. Will you make tea, Sasuke?”

Sasuke feels like he is frozen to his zabuton, his knees locked and crumpled, his feet numb beneath his weight, but he hoists himself up, steps away to give his brother space. He clatters about in their small kitchen, making just enough noise to let Itachi pretend Sasuke can’t hear his unsteady breathing.

Brother speaks again cradling the small teacup between his long, narrow fingers. It’s surely too hot, he doesn’t drink it, but he holds it in front of his mouth like a barrier. “Shisui saved us all. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t, but I’m not sure any of us would have survived.”

He says _survived_ and Sasuke stomach clenches because he thinks he means that literally. This is not a metaphor, their almost-destruction, and Sasuke does not think about his childhood nightmares of bodies in the streets, blood in the dojo, countless deaths he had seen and then convinced himself he had not.

“We found out—” Brother sucks his teeth, and corrects himself, “_I_ found out that a man I knew, _thought I knew_, was manipulating me, us, everyone, into escalating the situation. We didn’t need much. It’s why he did it. You know, Sasuke, how strongly our family feels.”

Sasuke nods. He can’t do anything but. He knows others think of them as stoic, but it’s a practiced facade, it’s all he can do to keep from boiling over sometimes. Sasuke’s never been good at true stoicism, he hides behind the fall of his hair and buries his feelings under frustration and arrogance, which has built him a reputation of his own. 

“When threatened, aggrieved, our clan could ruin a nation. He knew that. And he very nearly convinced us to.”

“Why?”

“Power. Presumably,” Brother shrugs, a jerky motion so strange compared to his usual dance-like grace. “He did not trust our best intentions, and then went out of his way to prove it.” 

“Why didn’t I know?” Sasuke asks. He’s never been the son his father wanted, but he’s still a part of the family, of the Head family, second born and second best as he is. 

Itachi smiles a narrow, grim smile, and says, “You were a child. I never wanted you to have to know.”

“I’m not a little kid anymore,” Sasuke says, unable to keep the grumble out of his voice.

Brother’s smile gets a little less sorrowful, a little brighter and more genuine. “You’ll always be my little brother.”

“What happened to the man?”

“He fled. Called out as the traitor to the village that he is, he vanished when his conspiracy was exposed. There’s been no sign of him since.”

“So he’s still out there?”

“As are some of his people. We managed to disband most of his forces, but not all. We find traces of his soldiers everywhere, interfering in missions, infiltrating the village. We know what to look for now. He was an extremist, and believed he was doing the right thing for the village. He still believes it his place to control our home.”

There’s only one more thing Sasuke feels like he can ask his brother tonight. 

“What is the Kyūbi?” Sasuke asks, feeling young and stupid. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to know about this and hasn’t been paying attention, or if it’s been kept from him, like his own family history.

“Your friend, Naruto-kun,” says Brother, and Sasuke has never felt younger or stupider than when his brother uproots his whole world view.

Sasuke doesn’t have much experience ending a conversation like this. He stands, hauling himself up from the table again, and steps clumsily around to where Brother sits, watching him silently, still holding his teacup. Sasuke kneels beside him and wraps his long, scrawny arms around his big brother’s shoulders. 

Brother is so still.

They haven’t really hugged since Sasuke was small enough to ride on Brother’s back. They touch, frequently, fleetingly, passing hands over each other, Brother’s fingers on Sasuke’s cheek, Sasuke’s on his brother’s back as they move in the kitchen. Fingers tangled in sleeves before one of them leaves on a mission, holding them still without holding them close.

Brother turns, angles his body in, and sinks into Sasuke’s embrace.

____________

Sasuke and his brother move awkwardly with each other for the first time since moving in together, an uncomfortable dance around everything else left unsaid that Sasuke has never known, and Itachi has hidden from him.

Sasuke cannot fathom how close to devastation his family had come, and Brother knows it all too well, and realizing this puts them both off kilter. It’s the most disconnected they have been since the actual events in question.

Eventually the discomfort fades. 

Brother is still Brother, and Sasuke will never not believe him, will never not trust him in the way he trusts that the sun will rise, and the leaves will fall, and Kakashi-sensei will always be at least twenty minutes late.

Sasuke keeps reading old reports, keeps circling closer and closer to the details that Brother doesn’t want to talk about, too close to ANBU and betrayal and the things about their family that Brother hates most, but together they settle into a new understanding. Sasuke wants to uphold this new status more than anything else in the world.

Sasuke is someone Brother can trust in return, now.

____________

Things make _a lot more sense_ about Naruto, too. 

That dumbass. 

Sasuke follows him through Jiraiya’s reports, through other reports coming in tangentially that mention him, puts the pieces together into a narrative of Naruto growing strong, independent, more worldly.

He’s still an idiot, and apparently will never stop trying to make friends with dangerous psychopaths, which actually makes a lot more sense too, given the context. It might not be the Kyūbi that makes him determined to reach out, but it has shaped who he is, and some things will apparently never change.

Sasuke smiles, just a little bit, to himself as he reads about Naruto extending his hand again, always ready, always waiting for someone to reach back.

____________

Sometimes Sasuke goes on missions with his Intelligence team, under Isao-san’s leadership. His teammates, Nara Kaede and Uzuki Shizuo, are both older chūnin who easily fall into the Mission Desk habit of ruffling Sasuke’s hair for good luck before they leave the village. He’s not _that short_.

Missions with them have none of the easy comfort of Kakashi-sensei’s guidance, or even Yamato-san’s steady reassurance, but Isao-san is a tokubetsu-jōnin and a Byakugan wielder, so it’s not like he’s incompetent. 

Really the main downside is the fatal flaw that runs rampant through the Intelligence Division, which is that everyone assumes that everyone else knows exactly what they know. It’s not unreasonable, they are the _Intelligence Division_, you’d think they’d keep up to date on things, but in practice, interpersonal communication falls a little by the wayside when each individual is working on their own projects and timelines. Not everyone is as irritatingly omniscient or as much of a busybody as Brother or Kakashi-sensei, even in the most concentrated hub of rumors and gossip and intel. What counts is when Division Heads get their updates, so they can always follow through with the chūnin in charge of this detail or that. Having grown up surrounded by adults who take an uncomfortable amount of pride in knowing more than anyone else, Sasuke is still adjusting to the idea that being an adult means he has to talk about things with his peers _on his own_. 

This means that when Orochimaru comes for Sasuke himself, Sasuke is the only one who isn’t terribly surprised.

They’re in the Land of Hot Water, on their way back from meeting another team on a long term mission in Lightning. Their missions usually involve information too sensitive to trust to summons, or intercepting enemy nin who could get in the way of their people. Kaede likes the ones where they sabotage the saboteurs, spreading misinformation and redirecting attention from the real targets, she gets really into building backstories for her characters. Sasuke sort of hates those the most, specifically for that same reason. He makes a terrible farm hand, and he’s proud of it.

Sasuke feels them coming as they cross the salt flats between thermal pools, the less friendly, more acidic side of the country’s infamous hot springs, where the temperature will boil one’s skin off in a heartbeat. He calls back to Isao-san, running at the rear guard of their little group. 

Isao-san’s eyes bulge, peering through the haze as a geyser vents forty meters to their left, sending burning hot steam into the air around them. It’s a bad place for an ambush. 

Shizuo drops back to run alongside the rest of them, and Isao-san steps up from behind. They can’t spread out far side-to-side, the path between the pools is too narrow to allow for much transverse maneuvering, so they tuck in close, moving more slowly to confer.

Sasuke’s attention is split between the encroaching chakra signatures and Isao-san’s terse instructions. He knows one of them, he’s certain of it, and whatever it is sends chills down his spine despite the heat of their surroundings. Then Isao-san says “It’s the Snake Sannin,” and Sasuke realizes that Orochimaru probably hasn’t listened to _no_ a lot in his life, so he must not be used to accepting rejection.

Kaede laughs when Sasuke swears, as though he’s still a rookie genin about to see combat for the first time, but she stops when he follows it up with “He’s here for me.”

“Why would he want you?” Kaede asks, her dark spiky hair flopping limply in the hot, muggy air. 

“Sharingan. He tried to take me last year after the Chūnin Exams,” Sasuke explains, focusing inward to try and figure out the other signatures he can sense. “The Hokage kept me in the village for a year because of it, I thought he’d given up.” Who ever the others are, they feel strangely flat, polished like smoothed over riverstones, but they’re unfamiliar. 

Shizuo stares at him like he’s never considered Sasuke to be someone anyone would go out of their way to have, which is how a lot of people look at him. He’s not a bad guy, but he is kind of a dick, and he had been on cousin Shisui’s genin team, so he’s got especially high expectations for Uchiha brats.

Isao-san is far too uptight to swear, but he sure looks like he wants to. He angles their group slightly farther south than their original heading, which will take them out of the salt flats faster he says, and onto more stable ground. Orochimaru will intercept them soon enough coming in from the northwest, and none of them want to start a ninjutsu battle in range of the geysers.

They run.

Orochimaru’s men converge on them just before they reach the inclined rocks and hazy scrub that mark the border of the flats. Four men in black, their faces covered in stark white masks without even village sigils, drop down from the higher level and bring them to a halt. The moon-masked nin surround their team and wait, crouched and still.

Orochimaru alights behind his faceless followers, and fixes his narrow golden eyes on Sasuke.

“You’ve kept me waiting, Sasuke-kun,” he murmurs, his low oily voice carrying surprisingly well through the humidity dampening all other sounds. 

Sasuke reaches for his eyepatch. He doesn’t like to do it, but he knows how useful his left eye can be, especially in a fight. It sees things he doesn’t know to look for.

One of the masked nin draws a double-edged tantō from over his shoulder and Isao-san’s pale face goes ashen under his bandana. 

“_Root_.”

They’re good, the masked nin, even before they use ninjutsu. The only saving grace is that Orochimaru once again seems content to sit back and watch as his subordinates fight for him. Split up, one on one, Sasuke’s team can barely hold their own, each fully occupied by at least jōnin level skills if not higher.

Sasuke’s opponent wields a sasumata, the forked spear-end moving like a blur, hooking his arms, his shoulders, his wrists every time he tries to strike a blow. He can avoid the iron tip, his Sharingan leading him into complicated dodges and parries, but he can’t close in to hit back. When he tries to get in close, the masked nin goes for his throat, and he has to duck, lean, leap away to avoid getting strangled. He’s being herded, he can tell, each jab guiding his back towards the rocks they had been aiming for, and he can’t let the man pin him down. Murakumo flashes in response, but the shaft of the man’s sasumata is solid heavy wood, longer than Sasuke’s own reach, and it won’t conduct a Chidori charge. Every time Sasuke’s blade strikes the shaft, deep electricity-honed gouges cut into the wood, just too shy to cleave it. The air is uncomfortably hot and uncomfortably damp, but not condensed enough to send a spark through the moisture, so that’s out too.

Sasuke pauses, ducks, and handsprings away, putting distance between them so he can get out his ninja wire. His back against the rock is not as detrimental if he can keep the man away from him, keep him from pinning him at the throat with his long-armed spear fork.

The man’s sasumata, and his clothing, are not nearly so well defended against flaming shuriken. 

Still, as a group, they’re not quite tipping the balance.

Orochimaru’s slit eyes follow Sasuke greedily, scraping over his consciousness, pulling his attention from the fight. His focus is like a weight on Sasuke’s shoulders, dragging at his collar down, strangling him and touching him.

Sasuke’s choking, and he’s still fighting.

A crack echoes across the salt flats. 

Another crack, again, and again, clapping like hyōshigi, starting slowly and growing faster and faster.

They… they fucking _are_ hyōshigi, Jiraiya’s goddamn concussion blocks and his goddamn ego ringing out over the battle scene.

The Toad Sannin has come to save the day.

And Naruto.

Naruto grins sharp-toothed at Sasuke as he slips in beside him, covering his flank like they haven’t been on opposite sides of the country for a year and a half, and he’s a lot less of an eyesore these days, which is frankly a relief. They play off each other so well, recalling old training techniques augmented by their own personal growth, it very nearly surprises Sasuke to a standstill, but Naruto’s enthusiasm is just as bright and overflowing as it’s ever been, and he hauls Sasuke along.

The tides turn.

Jiraiya engages Orochimaru, not even stopping to glance at the four masked nin, and their ninjutsu battle swamps the other skirmishes like a tidal wave. They’re just _so hilariously overpowered_, Sasuke has never seen the likes of it. He’s heard stories, but that means nothing in the face of reality. Oil and fire and burning hot acidic water pulled from the pools around them, rocky terrain turned to mud beneath a Doton, enormous summons of astronomical proportion. Sasuke can’t help but fear being caught up in the collateral. 

The masked nin don’t get distracted, though, not for something as paltry as a Kage-level ninjutsu fight. Luckily, there’s a thousand Naruto’s to go around.

Naruto tries to pile them all on top of the sasumata man. Sasuke actually pulls his attention from the fight to slap him upside the head, and aim the extra Narutos to the other fights. Shizuo in particular is looking pretty rough, and Kaede is keeping her opponent on the run from her Kagemane no Jutsu, but just barely.

Isao-san calls out to the team not to kill their opponents if they can, and Sasuke wants to laugh. If Naruto and the Toad Sannin hadn’t arrived, they wouldn’t have had a chance at beating the masked nin, let alone take them alive. 

They do though.

The Sannin are still occupied when Kaede finally snags the last masked nin in her Kagemane. She can only hold them for so long before her shadow wavers and shivers into shards of darkness, dissipating into the rocky terrain, but the Narutos have rope aplenty, and Isao-san hits their tenketsu to block their chakra as soon as they’re restrained. 

With Kaede and Isao-san to guard their captives, the three others turn to the Sannin fight, to see if they can lend a hand.

They _can’t_. This fight is far too big for them, far out of Sasuke’s league, and he’s better at ninjutsu than Shizuo, who specializes in traps and tracking.

Naruto doesn’t seem to care though. He hurls himself in without a second thought, so Sasuke goes with him.

Orochimaru is not defeated by any stretch by the three of them together, he delights in dragging Sasuke away from the others as often as he can to test him one on one, and Sasuke has to keep himself from freezing every time. He _does not like_ the way Orochimaru looks at him, not the feel of his cold skin locked against his forearms in taijutsu, not the memory of Kakashi-sensei’s voice saying _“I won’t let him take you, Sasuke. I promise.”_

He won’t let himself be taken either. 

Maybe they could have won in the end, it seems like if they just got the right rhythm, just the right burst of power they could, but a grey-haired nin appears on the other side of the ridge, and he draws Orochimaru’s attention.

It’s not like he has anything to prove, he’s one of the greatest masters of ninjutsu in the world. Orochimaru disengages, slaps away their last-ditch attacks like mosquitoes, and leaps back to his grey-haired compatriot.

Orochimaru spares some mocking final words for Jiraiya, who scowls, but has been seriously injured by one of the massive snake summons acidic bite, and so doesn’t pursue. Those slit eyes turn just for a moment back to Sasuke, panting and bruised, and his long wet tongue dips out from between his lips in a slow, wet lick. 

“I do like you, Sasuke-kun,” he says, just before he and his grey-haired companion vanish. “I like you even more each time.”

They’re left there, at the rocky basin edge of the wrecked salt flats, panting in sulfuric mist and wincing. Jiraiya grumbles something under his breath that Sasuke would get slapped for if he ever said it in earshot of his parents, and he hobbles with them back to the captured, recently un-masked nin. They are just as blank faced as they were with the masks on, and about a hundred times more unsettling for it. They’re also all very pale, not like Orochimaru’s milk-white skin, or Sasuke’s inherited shell-pink Uchiha pallor, but the sallow-grey tone of people kept from sunlight for years. 

Kaede has Nara clan medical pills in her pack that she hands out to them, to staunch bleeding, increase healing, and stabilize chakra. They don’t have a true medic-nin on their team, but Kaede does a decent job with the family potions and synthesized soldier pills. Sasuke takes his gratefully, crunching down on the sweet sugar coating to get to the bitter medicine inside. 

Isao-san stares at Sasuke with an unreadable look in his moon-pale eyes. “Any other surprises, Sasuke-kun?”

Sasuke thinks about it and shrugs. It’d been a year and a half, that’s basically forever. “I’ll let you know if any come up,” he says.

“Hmm, Uchiha, you look different,” Jiraiya mutters, setting his frowning face into the cup of his palm, peering at him closely. Sasuke doesn’t actually know if Jiraiya recognizes him at all, or if he’s mistaking him for his brother. Naruto turns to look too though, his eyebrows high on his forehead.

“Aah! Sasuke!” Naruto finally realizes what’s different. He drops his weight, braces his feet wide, and points at Sasuke’s face. “You have two eyes!”

Sasuke rolls said eyes, to demonstrate their full mobility. “You idiot.”

He’s done the damage though and now everyone is peering curiously at Sasuke’s uncovered face, watching as he fishes his eyepatch back out of his pocket and reaffixes it. He glowers at them one-eyed in response. He only needs one to make gawkers rethink their stance, he’s practiced that.

Naruto’s directly in his face when he turns around, and his grubby little hands are up and grasping before Sasuke can do anything about it. He snaps the eyepatch against Sasuke’s face, trying to peer underneath it again.

“Ow!” Sasuke reels backwards. “Why are you like this? You’ve seen it before, you dumbass.”

“Ah, sorry! But what is it? Why do you wear that?” Naruto asks, fluttering around in unsatisfied frustration. “You never answer, you bastard!”

“I don’t need to answer to the likes of you, loser.”

“I am your _best friend_, so who’s the loser now, huh?”

“You’re the one who left, what kind of best friend is that?”

“_You’re the one_ who won’t tell me the _truth_,” says Naruto, as he wraps himself arms and legs around Sasuke and tries to wrestle him to the ground. 

Jiraiya, Sasuke’s team, and all the captives, watch quietly as they roll back and forth.

“It’s just a thing! It’s an Uchiha thing! You wouldn’t understand, _ow_, get off, stop _biting_ me.”

Naruto bites harder so Sasuke lights himself up with a Chidori Nagashi to paralyze him. Jiraiya has to pick him up out of the dirt and prop him against a rock while Sasuke claps his hands free of grit and pretends none of that ever happened.

“You jerk,” Naruto slurs, slumping a little to the side. Jiraiya rights him. “I’ll get you to tell me one day, I swear it.”

Sasuke curses. He knows by now that once Naruto announces something he’ll rewrite the universe to get it. He’ll be Hokage one day, that’s for damn sure, but Sasuke will keep his secret from Naruto’s insistent, pushy, world defying determination for as long as he can. 

“We were just passing through on our way to Onsenzakura to complete some vital research I need to do,” announces Jiraiya, drawing himself up to look terribly self important.

Naruto, even paralyzed and nearly folded in half on the ground, still manages to roll his eyes and scowl at the old man’s posturing. “We’re always doing his stupid research,” he mutters so Sasuke can hear him.

Sasuke sits cross-legged on the ground beside him, keeping the idiot company. “I know. I’ve read his reports.”

Naruto’s look of irritation immediately transforms into a look of pure delight. “Really? _You_ read his reports?” He cackles, drawing everyone’s attention, and Sasuke’s face makes a solid effort to rival the surface of the sun.

“Sh-shut up! It’s not like that, it’s my _job!_ Stop laughing,” he hisses, bopping Naruto on the head while he can’t dodge.

Naruto manages to quiet his incessant sniggering down enough to let the others focus, but his face is all crinkled up in glee. Every few minutes he picks it up again, muttering “You pervert, you’re just like Kakashi-sensei… dumb Sasuke, hehe. Gonna be a creep when you grow up.”

“You’re already a creep, wandering around with this pervert,” Sasuke hits back.

____________

Sasuke realizes something very important just before they go their separate ways, once Naruto is vertical again and trying to loop an arm across Sasuke’s shoulders.

Naruto is _ the same height as Sasuke_. 

This is unacceptable.

Sasuke has spent the last two years growing non-stop, bone-deep aches in his arms and legs that never seemed to fade, burning through clothes like wildfire, and eating like an Akimichi on a mission. 

He’d always been taller than Naruto.

He tries not to make it obvious when they stand side-by-side listening to Jiraiya brief Isao-san on their next steps with the Root nin, how he sidles just a little bit closer and tries to compare heights. He thinks he’s still got a few centimeters on the dumb runt.

“Alright, brat,” says Jiraiya, clasping his big hand onto Sasuke’s shoulder just before they leave. “You keep this up, Orochimaru’s gonna realize you’re too big to swallow whole.” He gives him two pats, like a contractual exchange, and withdraws.

Sasuke doesn’t know if that’s true, but he’ll take it. His newest goal apparently is to make Orochimaru choke on him, and that’s going to be quite a lot of work, so he needs all the encouragement he can get probably.

He raises a hand to Naruto, who waves violently back at him, and they take off running in opposite directions one more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the majority of this chapter expanded on the hastily added outline note ‘oops now sasuke’s a spy master’ and that will tell you a lot about my writing techniques and also why it too so long sorry ilu


	7. Chapter 7

The more Sasuke learns about Root the more uncomfortable he feels. He’s not quite on the same page as his brother, not a pacifist pushing back against ANBU, but the horror of it creeps into his bones and makes him look at the world around him slightly differently.

Sasuke sometimes feels like so much more of a child compared to his teammates. Lee, with his drive to become a ninja despite his setbacks; Neji and his awful family situation, his years of resentment and struggle to break out of the confines of prescripted fate, Hinata on the other side, and no better for it. Sakura has a hidden anger she doesn’t let shine, and the seething cracks burst out at unexpected intervals. Naruto’s whole childhood is one that makes Sasuke want to punch things, so he can’t imagine how Naruto feels about it.

Learning about Root is an entirely new level Sasuke has never known to try and fathom.

Sasuke just sort of wishes his father would acknowledge him more, and wants to live up to his big brother’s standard, and maybe have Orochimaru leave him alone. His goals are simple if not always accessible, but even with his weird eye, his life hasn’t been an unwinnable hardship. 

It’s weird sometimes being such an outlier.

____________

He still doesn’t know enough. 

Sasuke researches the Kyūbi attack, feeling like he’s betraying his friend the whole time. He’s certain that Naruto has never had access to these kinds of records, never known his own history except by way of rumors and gossip. This too is barely touched on in reports, stifled and suppressed in all official capacity. 

The beast attacked in early October, thirteen years ago. It broke free of its human cage, not named, and ravaged Konohagakure, resulting in hundreds of casualties and several dozen deaths. The Uchiha Clan was not present.

Honored Yondaime-sama sealed the raging beast into the infant Uzumaki Naruto, who will be protected by ANBU until he graduates the Academy. 

The report writer suggests that because the Uchiha had kept clear of the attack, perhaps they did so for a reason. Afterall, the infamous dōjutsu of Konoha’s most infamous clan is known for being able to control the tailed beasts.

Sasuke has to put the scroll down for a minute. He didn’t know that. He takes a deep breath, shakes himself out of his own brain, and goes back to reading. He doesn’t know a lot of things, too many, that’s why he’s here.

He reads about Sandaime-sama’s proclamation that no one would hear of the jinchūriki who did not already know, and he feels a twist of doubt. That’s such a large secret to hide, especially with the damage wrought by the monster on the village. So many angry, so many hurt, and none of them allowed to speak about it? No wonder it turned into resentment of Naruto, who stood in as the embodiment of their secret, instead of the chakra construct that had actually dealt the damage.

And if the Uchiha clan was ever associated with the attack, well. That makes a kind of horrible sense. People distrust so easily.

____________

The Root nin they took captive from Orochimaru are brought back to the village and vanish for several months. Sasuke can’t seem to get an update on them, even entrenched in the midst of the Intelligence Division.

He keeps an eye out, quietly worried, and spends his free time researching Root. He can’t get into most of it, but what he finds sets a roiling unease in his stomach.

Then they reappear, and Sasuke is a lot less worried and a lot more irritated.

Sasuke is called in to the Hokage’s office and is assigned one as a shadow. Apparently he “made a good impression” and now Tsunade-sama wants him to be a mentor. The fact that she’s cackling as she says this is a clear indicator of how well this is going to go.

Yamato-san gets one too, the sasumata nin who had nearly caved in Sasuke’s rib cage during their fight. They meet up at a tea stand with their respective Root nin and the blank, gently smiling faces they both have on is genuinely terrifying. Yamato-san’s face thing doesn’t seem to have an effect on them, and Sasuke doesn’t have a face thing besides a really good glower, but that really just seems weak in comparison.

They’re not attacking, though, which is nice. They actually seem very mild and non combative outside of Orochimaru’s influence, but they don’t have names, which is fairly concerning.

“So,” Sasuke asks, trying to keep his eye on that creepy smile in case it changes suddenly, “Where’ve you all been? Since we brought you back.”

“Indoctrination,” says Sasuke’s nin, the younger one, only a few years older than Sasuke. His smile doesn’t change a bit.

Sasuke and Yamato-san stare.

Sasuke’s nin cocks his head to the side, like a baby bird. “I made a joke.”

“Aah,” says Yamato-san’s nin, whose nose looks like it’s been broken several times in the past, but he smiles just the same. “I see.”

“Actually, it was reintegration training. See? It was a reference to reality, but with an unexpected twist.”

“I understand. Well done.”

Sasuke’s going to get eye strain from how hard he’s watching them.

Yamato-san braces himself, and says “I remember the reintegration training. You’re doing… fine? Well, you’ve still got a ways to go. Do you know what you’d like to be called?”

Sasuke’s nin cocks his head to the other side, letting dark bangs fall away from dark eyes. “No.”

Yamato-san’s nin says “I like Sasumata.”

Sasuke’s nin hesitates, casting a calculating glance at Yamato-san. He opens his mouth as if to say something, breathes in deep, and as he starts to say “You knew Danz—” he drops to the ground, seizing.

That’s how they find out about the silence seals. Of course _they_ couldn’t talk about it, but Sasuke feels like _Tsunade-sama_ should have warned them.

Apparently it’s still a work in progress.

____________

He finds the report a couple months after starting his personal investigation, in a place he did not expect.

Sasuke had never stopped looking. He doesn’t have all the answers and Brother doesn’t want to talk about it, so he kept digging whenever he had the time. At the same time, he has a job to do, and a new terrible Hokage-designated hanger-on who is genuinely the worst conversationalist Sasuke’s ever met. And Sasuke knows where he ranks on _that_ particular hierarchy. 

Still, his new best friend is the one who points him in a new direction. He calls Sasuke _Inadequate_ as an affectionate nickname, and in return Sasuke calls him _Jackass_.

They try out a new name for him every week, but he’s more or less ambivalent to all of them equally. 

Sakura is _Ugly_, Kaede is _Wide-mouth_, Shizuo becomes _Trashy_ because of his habit of collecting spare parts for his traps, and Isao-san remains Isao-san, because apparently the nameless jackass has an ingrained respect for authority figures too deep for therapy to touch. Yamato-san’s Root nin isn’t nearly so much of a dick, but also he named himself after his weapon, so he’s probably got his own issues.

But nameless or not, he knows things that Sasuke doesn’t. He turns out to be very good at fuinjutsu and reasonably practiced at breaking seals, and has a new and enthusiastic disregard for rules that he seems to be very excited about trying. Well, as excited as an emotionless child soldier can get. He’s working on it.

He’s looking over Sasuke’s shoulder at a marginally related file, when he says “I remember an Uchiha.”

Sasuke looks up. “From when you were here before?” He has to be careful of what he asks, how he asks it, because of the silence seal. Also, because the Root nin is a jackass and enjoys being difficult.

Jackass, who is trying out the name _Daichi_ this week, nods and smiles. “It was a long time ago.”

“Seven years, or so?” Sasuke asks. Jackass has been snooping in on everything Sasuke’s been doing, but the fact of the matter is that the history of the relationship between the Uchiha clan and the village isn’t exactly a secret, sealed reports or no. Just because Sasuke didn’t know about it doesn’t mean no one does. 

Seven years ago, Jackass would have been nine, probably.

“Yes. He looked like you, but prettier. He had two eyes, and they were nicer.”

“Thanks.” Sasuke shuffles his files, and asks like he has ever successfully pretended to be nonchalant in his entire life, “Can you show me where to find information about him?”

Together they take a diversion from the Uchiha family history into Root, and Sasuke learns more about hate than he ever has in his life. Jackass breaks seals left and right getting into the right files, into records rooms Sasuke didn’t even know existed.

And so together they find the one report that talks explicitly about cousin Shisui, in his ANBU guise as Seal, his Mangekyō Sharingan, and the potential application thereof.

_Kotoamatsukami_ is the name of his dōjutsu.

Jackass points to a name and it takes Sasuke a moment to recognize it, only having heard it in brief, bare mentions, always hushed, always cut short. Shimura Danzō, former head of Root, traitor fanatic to the village, had thought his cousin’s bloodline inheritance was an asset.

For one thing, the details of Uchiha clan bloodlines should _not_ be documented outside the Clan’s own records. That is a violation on so many levels it shames Sasuke to even read it without his Clan Head’s permission, let alone allow his jackass shadow read it alongside him. Jackass doesn’t know anything about clans though, barely knows about family, about friendship, so Sasuke does his best to explain, clutching the scroll to his chest like he can protect this information. He feels like it will burn him in retribution if he shows it to a near stranger.

For another, this is _mind-control_. This is what happened to his jackass new friend, and all the others in Root, this is brainwashing and manipulation beyond the pale, this is _horrifying_.

Is this what changed things?

Is this how their clan was saved?

Sasuke takes the scroll, disregarding protocol, and for the very first time goes to the Naka Shrine by himself.

Jackass sits on one side of the steps just outside the torii with a little book and a pot of ink. 

Sasuke hasn’t been to the shrine since he moved in with Brother, and even before that Mother and Father only took him twice a year for festivals. He hesitates at the chōzuya, feeling an unaccountable nervousness in the face of the knowledge he’s learned. It feels _dirty_ to bring an outsider’s perspective into their family shrine, to think the things he doesn’t want to think about his cousin. He clutches the scroll where it rests in his vest pocket, and shakes himself down. 

He washes his hands, spits on the rocks, ducks under the Miko’s watchful gaze. 

Sasuke’s not actually here to pray, but he claps his hands and bows his head at the altar anyway, feeling like he could use a steadying presence in his life. He asks, a little desperately, without really thinking about it, for help. 

Then he slips into the secret meeting room he’s not supposed to know about, under the seventh tatami mat. He’s never been there before, never been invited to one of the clan’s secret meetings, has never been important enough or powerful enough, or, thinking about it, old enough to be a part of it, but he knew it existed in the same way he knew Shisui’s ANBU callsign. He understands a little better now why he was left out.

The rooms underneath the shrine store all kinds of Uchiha family documents that can’t be accessed without the Sharingan. The scroll he adds to the pile doesn’t have the same protection, it doesn’t even have the seal that had kept it bound before his jackass new friend had unsealed, but this is where it _belongs_. Sasuke stuffs it under the majority of the scrolls already there to offer as much protection as he can.

He turns to the tablet, and reads about the Mangekyō.

____________

Daichi-Jackass-whoever has to catch him when he comes stumbling out of the shrine, shivering.

____________

Shisui is his favorite cousin, has been since Sasuke figured out he could have favorites and didn’t have to suffer through his boring cousins equally. He’s _Brother’s best friend_.

How could he do this?

How _dare_ he?

____________

Sasuke has never been to Shisui’s apartment, doesn’t know if he’s on a mission right now, and he doesn’t actually want to talk to him.

He confronts Brother instead, feeling like he’s cutting his own heart out. He had _just_ become someone Brother could trust, and now this. Is it better to betray his brother for the sake of his family? Or let his family’s injustice pass by for his brother’s sake.

He still doesn’t know specifics. He might be wrong. Maybe there isn’t a specific report written about the night his cousin betrayed his whole clan.

This is one more conversation he doesn’t know how to start. Somehow this always seems to happen to Sasuke, but he can’t stop now, not until he knows the truth. “Did Shisui use Kotoamatsukami to save our clan?”

Brother drops his plate.

It’s a late night. Brother stayed in the office later than usual, working on the paperwork for a new tentative alliance with Amegakure, in the wake of Naruto’s absurd destabilizing of their region. It’s taken a while, but Tsunade-sama seems to think it will be mutually beneficial. 

Sasuke had ordered takeaway, his hands shaking too badly to cook.

Brother likes to eat like a civilized adult, instead of out of the cartons, so when he drops his plate, the stoneware shatters and his curry splats in a messy slop of chicken and rice on the floorboards. Brother’s pale foot begins to bleed from one of the stone shards.

Sasuke wants to drop his plate too, but he hadn’t actually worked up the guts to serve himself. His insides are all tangled up anyway, he couldn’t possibly eat and not vomit.

“Brother,” Sasuke is pleading, his voice is barely above a whisper, he has to try again, “_Brother_, how could you? How could he? It’s _mind-control_, there has to have been another way!” He can’t speak too loudly, _shit_ he didn’t think to put up the silence barrier, but a hoarse croak is all he can manage anyway.

“Sasuke, there was no time. Shimura-san was going to force our hand, the Elders wouldn’t listen to reason,” Brother has gone pale, pale and trembling. Is he furious? Terrified? Sasuke can’t tell. “We had to do _something_, and Kakashi —” Brother cuts himself off.

There is nothing after that.

Sasuke’s train of thought drops into an open void and there is _nothing_.

“Kakashi-sensei?”

Itachi grimaces. He did not mean to say that. “It’s not what you think,” he says slowly. “I know you, little brother, I know you feel betrayed, but you don’t know everything.”

Sasuke stands his ground. “So, tell me.”

____________

Brother takes Sasuke to the Uchiha compound, into the woods where they used to train, into the heart of their family’s lands, and sends a crow for Shisui.

They wait in the darkness.

Brother has rarely changed in Sasuke’s view over the years, he has always been tall and slender, with narrow shoulders that carry the weight of the clan and everyone’s respect on them. Whenever Sasuke learns something new about Brother he simply adds it to the pedestal and continues as he always has, looking up in admiration.

Shisui is older, taller, broader in general. He has beautiful eyes, and he’s big for an Uchiha, and he’s fast. He’s never seemed like a threat before, but apparently that has changed, and when Sasuke looks up at him he feels the weight of unchecked strength pushing back.

Sasuke is afraid of his cousin and what he can do.

Itachi speaks first when Shisui arrives.

“He knows.”

It could mean a lot of things. The way Shisui pales makes it clear that he understands immediately. He has an excuse ready, words tripping off his lips to spill at Sasuke’s feet.

“Shimura Danzō was going to lead our clan into destruction and desolation for his own personal gain, under the guise of protecting the village. I wasn’t going to let him do it.”

“You brainwashed people,” Sasuke whispers. His voice carries anyway in the dark clearing. “You manipulated them. You’re no better than him.”

There are stars, peeking through the tree branches above them.

Sasuke watches Shisui shake his head by their light, his curls mussed. “I did what I had to do.”

“Shisui, you need to tell him,” Brother cuts in, his words cracking like a whip. He has not bothered to restrain his voice, and somewhere in the darkness a night bird takes off from a tree branch.

“You said he knows,” Shisui protests, his eyes darting between brothers.

“He knows about Kotoamatsukami. Now tell him the rest. He sees more than you know, Shisui, you _need to tell him_.”

Shisui does not. He stands in silence.

“What is the rest?” Sasuke asks. 

Brother steps away from Shisui to stand at Sasuke’s elbow.

Shisui takes a deep breath. “What do you already know, Sasuke?” he hedges.

Sasuke holds himself stiffly, trying not to lean into Brother’s cold comfort. He doesn’t know if it’s trustworthy, not now. “I know we were persecuted because of the Kyūbi attack, and segregated to the compound, and Uncle Teyaki lost his license to sell in the village market. I know the Elders were mad, and Father, and everyone wanted to do something about it. I know Shimura Danzō was the head of Root, and he wanted to use your Mangekyō to change people’s minds.” He stops himself there, before he actually accuses his cousin of anything.

Shisui turns his head away, a negation.

“Sasuke, I have only used it once in my life. Kotoamatsukami is the ultimate technique, and I’ve never wanted, nor been able to use it since. I would _never_ turn such a power on my people like that.” He ducks his head, runs his broad hand through his curling hair, and sighs deeply. “To protect our people, I betrayed my village.”

Sasuke can’t breathe.

Shisui’s voice shakes when he continues. “The only thing standing between us and our freedom… was Sandaime Hokage-sama, who had too much faith in Danzō to bring his machinations to an end. Our discrimination was at the whim of a single man, who held free reign over the village’s hearts. I — _convinced_ Sandaime-sama to expose Root, and denounce Danzō, and end the persecution of our clan.” 

Sasuke _can’t breathe_. Brother touches him on the shoulder and Sasuke inhales on a cough. 

Shisui goes on as though he can’t stop himself. “I became what Danzō warned against. I quit ANBU after that. I clearly had no loyalty to the Hokage, barely any to the village, I refused to see it ruined by civil war, but after what I did? I couldn’t pretend to have honor. No one else knew, but I did. I couldn't lie to myself, let alone the rest of the village.” His voice pitches higher, and Sasuke wants to retreat, wants to press back into Brother’s arms away from this confrontation. “I have tried _so hard_ to prove myself again, to my village, to my oaths, but I will never forget what I did to protect my people, and I know I would _never take it back_ even if I could.” He gasps a little at the end, panting at the weight of his own emotions. His face scrunches up in a grimace. “I am _sorry Sasuke_ that I ever made you doubt me. I’m _sorry_.”

Brother steps in when Shisui’s voice breaks. “We tried to talk to the Elders. We talked to Father. We tried for _months_ on our own. But nothing we did for the clan would change how we were perceived until someone did something about Shimura. Sandaime-sama was on his genin team. They were students under Nidaime Hokage together. I don’t actually know if Sandaime was too trusting of Shimura or if he mistrusted the Uchiha enough to heed his poisoned words, but he would not move against him, and we were all suffering for it.”

“So I did what I had to,” Shisui picks up the thread. “I ambushed the Hokage in his office in ANBU gear, no one stopped me, they didn’t even try, and I used our most infamous dōjutsu to turn him against his oldest friend, so that our clan could live in peace.”

Sasuke doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want any more surprises today, but he forces himself along. “So what does Kakashi-sensei have to do with this?”

Shisui sighs, shamefaced. “Kakashi-san is the reason we knew. Until he warned us,” he looks up to Itachi, whose face has gone deathly still, “we thought Danzō was right. We thought there wasn’t anything we could do that wouldn’t betray our clan. Itachi had accepted the mission to spy on clan meetings. I was Danzō’s main contact. We thought we were doing the right thing.” He scrubs his hand across his face, rubbing at his tired, cursed eyes. 

“Kakashi-san knew about Shimura’s treachery. He came to us when Sandaime-sama refused to listen. I told you you could trust him,” Brother’s says, low and rough, “because I trusted him when I thought there was no one else on our side, and it paid off.”

Sasuke shakes his head. It’s not quite a denial, although he kind of wishes it could be, but a deflection of any more information. 

Brother grasps at his shoulders, and pulls him closer. “Sasuke, no one but the three of us and Kakashi know these truths. Not even Father knows the full extent.”

If this came out… _Gods_ if this came out, the village wouldn’t need Shimura Danzō to cry wolf. Sasuke has learned this only recently, but he feels it in his bones: to the village, it would have been better for Shisui to turn his Kotoamatsukami on his own family than to turn it on the village head. He can see it now, how hard Brother and his cousins have worked to reestablish themselves in the village, redirect people’s expectations and callous, casual assumptions of stoicism and offhandedness. Brother is the Hokage’s left hand after Shizune-san, and while it might be what Brother actually wants to do, not fight but learn politics and diplomacy, resolving conflicts without war, it’s more than that, an Uchiha presence in Konoha’s highest echelon, with the Hokage’s ear, but also under her direct supervision. In a position of power, and under the thumb of power at the same time.

No wonder Father was so scared.

Sasuke has been doing his part too, however unknowingly, by being visible constantly for the year and a half he was confined to the village. By making connections with teams outside the Uchiha clan, by regularly meeting with the Hokage, and making a fool of himself at the Mission Desk, someone accessible and non-threatening and available for other Uchiha to interact with in full view. 

Sasuke nods. He will hold their secret, and protect his family.

He wonders if Godaime Tsunade-sama knows about any of this.

____________

Brother leaves the village on a mission, a rarity these days, and Sasuke knows he did it to run away from the resurgence of his betrayal. Brother loves this village, for all its corruption.

Sasuke lives alone for the duration, and makes himself visible, and goes to work, and puts on an act. He visits his mother and doesn’t answer her questions as to why he hugs her so tight, grown up shinobi that he is. 

Surprisingly for someone so poorly versed in emotions, his jackass Root nin is the only one to ask why his face is so wrong. Apparently he’s taken a class in understanding people. Sasuke looks extra incompetent, he is informed.

Jackass is going by Hibiki today, having already cast off Eito as disingenuous. Sasumata had started a trend, and the other former Root nin have decided to name themselves after their favorite weapons, but Eito-Hibiki-Jackass is dissatisfied by the idea. _Tantō_ is a little too generic. At least Jitte and Tsukubō aren’t particularly common weapons for shinobi, even if Sasuke has seen them in use once or twice by the KMPF. 

“What do you like then?” Sasuke asks, sitting on the roof of the Records Building with him for lunch. The jackass burns easily, but he insists on sitting in the sunlight.

“I like… Hmm.” He thinks about it. “I don’t know what I like.”

“Well, what do you do when you’re not being a, y’know,” Sasuke waves his hand vaguely, “Emotionless brainwashed child soldier?”

Jackass cocks his head to the side and squints at Sasuke in the sunlight. “I paint.”

Sasuke blinks. Is that what he was always doing with that book? Sasuke hadn’t bothered to notice. He tries to remember seeing Jackass fight, several months before, with Orochimaru, but he hadn’t been paying attention then either. He’d been a bit distracted by Sasumata’s sasumata, and then Naruto’s whole deal.

He wonders if he’s supposed to ask to see it.

“Can I see?”

“No.”

“Fine.” He didn’t want to see it anyway.

They sit in silence and look out at the village that has hurt their important people. It’s beautiful, in the afternoon sun.

“What about Sai?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ummmmm welcome to the feelings chapter, this is unprecedented and is unlikely to happen again but i couldn’t not??? it’s a shit show but imm not sorry but also i’m a little but sorry
> 
> i’m quick shout out to gardengalaxy and ShadowGirlLost22 who between the two of them basically coulda written this chapter themselves & i appreciate them for jumpstarting my brain


	8. Chapter 8

Kakashi-sensei comes home from his latest solo mission to find Yamato-san training Sai, Sasuke, and Sakura together. It’s become their usual practice in the sparse free time between Sakura’s hospital shifts, and Sasuke’s increasing workload in Intelligence.

They’re getting a little better as a three-man team. Yamato-san likes battle formations that would never work with Naruto, and it’s a new experience for all of them. Even a few years gone, Sasuke and Sakura have too many ingrained muscle memories of working with Naruto’s punch-first-learn-someone’s-tragic-backstory-later brutal fist style to easily adjust to Sai’s long range ninjutsu techniques. Now Sakura’s the heavy-hitter, and Sasuke is the taijutsu specialist. They don’t go on missions, what with Sakura’s schedule and Sai still working on his reintegration, but it’s nice to spend time together. 

Also Sasuke doesn’t have to punch Sai because Sakura will, which unexpectedly makes Sasuke the nice friend.

They pause for a rest after a bout and Kakashi-sensei hops off the bridge where he’d been perched, watching. He wanders over, long legs eating up the distance in loping strides, until he’s standing at Sasuke’s side. He claps a broad hand onto Sasuke’s shoulder and gives him a little jostle.

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I? Where did you even find him?” 

“This is not my fault,” Sasuke scowls. 

“Yes, it is,” Sai corrects, lifting one hand in the condescending pose he’s recently adopted for imparting knowledge on people, mostly Things He’s Read in Books and feels the need to share. “Inadequate-kun kidnapped me from Orochimaru.”

Kakashi-sensei eyeballs him.

Sasuke flushes brilliantly. “That’s _not_ what happened.”

“Ah, it sort of is,” Yamato-san adds, traitor that he is as soon as Kakashi-sensei’s in range.

“Only technically,” adds Sakura, because they’re all terrible.

Kakashi-sensei looks exactly the same as he had when he left. Sasuke hasn’t seen any files from any of his missions, so he thinks Kakashi-sensei’s either working with ANBU or reporting directly to the Hokage on his own. Sasuke doesn’t like that. He’s gotten attached to the idea of following his team around through field reports.

“What does it matter, he’s here now, and apparently he’s never leaving,” Sasuke huffs, folding his arms across his chest and tossing his bangs back away from his face.

“Sasuke-kun,” says Kakashi-sensei, glee creeping into his voice, “Did you make a new friend?”

“_No._”

____________

“So I hear you’re good with patterns,” Kakashi-sensei says, once he’s done bullying Sasuke about literally everything he’s ever done in his life. “Doin’ alright for yourself in Intelligence, huh?”

Sasuke glares, still straightening his hair from the latest invasion of his personal space. “Yes, why? What do you want?”

“Me? Oh, nothing.” Kakashi-sensei slips his hands into his pockets and turns, slinking away. He raises one hand in a lazy salute, and adds, “Hokage wanted to see you, Sasuke,” as he wanders away.

“What? When?”

“Oh, as soon as possible, I think she said.”

Sasuke’s already running past him, shouting over his shoulder, “And when did she _say that?_”

“Aah, a couple hours ago, maybe?” 

Kakashi-sensei’s disinterested voice fades into the distance as Sasuke books it to the Hokage’s tower.

Tsunade-sama is waiting for him.

Why anyone would ever consider sending Kakashi-sensei as a messenger is beyond him, so Sasuke just climbs in through the window and scowls, not deigning to make excuses for himself.

Tsunade-sama chucks a scroll at him as he crosses the sill, and he has to balance briefly to catch it and not get hit in the face. He unrolls it as he climbs back down.

“You’re late, Uchiha,” the Hokage snaps, a glint in her eyes that sets Sasuke’s hackles on edge.

“What did you expect?”

The scroll is a sealed list of field reports, in the same style as Sasuke’s compiled mission statements that he hands in to Isao-san, with documented patterns of behavior, locations of interest, and projected follow up moves. Sasuke scowls at it, because from a first glance, the reports are too widespread for a single mission, the information too jumbled and disconnected to give proper mission parameters. This one scroll looks like it should be at least three missions, one in the Land of Rice Fields, one in Rivers, and one all the way north in Iron, but they’re all mixed together.

“Sasuke-kun, are you listening to me?” Tsunade-sama’s voice is acidic.

“No,” says Sasuke, rolling up the scroll again. “What?”

“Do you know what to do with that statement?”

“You want me to fix it?”

“Yes. Give me something actually useable, please. There’s a lot riding on this information, but we need facts, not conjecture, to follow up on.” Tsunade-sama folds her hands on her desk, deceptively calm while her brown eyes spark wildfire. “I’m expecting not to be disappointed.”

“Fine,” says Sasuke, cocking his weight on one hip. He can’t seem to resist a challenge. “Do I have permission to find corroborating evidence?” He’ll probably have to go digging into other field reports for some of the context for these statements. It’s not easy to jump into the middle of someone else’s casefile, and the way Tsunade-sama’s eyeing him makes him think he’ll need extra clearance for some of it. 

“You have my permission. Do what you have to do, make it work. This will be an ongoing assignment, you will take any further reports and add them to your findings until this situation is resolved.”

“Who’s the mission for?”

“ANBU Hound,” she says, without a moment’s hesitation. That’s almost more disconcerting than if she’d waffled about it. Sasuke’s put together missions packets that were undoubtedly meant for ANBU Black Ops before, but that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t get confirmed to lowly Intelligence nin. Whatever this is meant to do, it’s important.

“What about Isao? And my team.”

“You are point of contact. The rest is on a need-to-know basis. Use them however you need to, but this is your assignment, and your responsibility. Kakashi will help you, when he can.”

Sasuke snorts.

____________

He was right. 

This mission packet is three kinds of bullshit, all sorts of dead end leads and conjecture and information coming out of nowhere with no verifiable source. One of the field reports about a possible target location in the Land of Rivers is literally just _this is where I thought they’d be, but I guess I was wrong_, with absolutely nothing there to say _why_ ANBU Hound had thought the Akatsuki would be hiding out in a random stretch of muddy river flats. It’s not even a full page, written on a hawk scroll, and that’s it: that’s all the documentation of Hound’s excursion to find the leader of Akatsuki.

Sasuke wants to shove it down Hound’s throat with an addendum on how to write a mission report. Oh gods, he’s turning into Iruka-sensei.

Sasuke has to set up his own research base for this project. With Tsunade-sama’s blessings, he gets a tiny office with some of the strongest seal barriers he has seen in Intelligence slapped onto the four cardinal points, and additional sealed traps on the single entrance. It’s a dim little room, and Sasuke stacks file boxes he hijacked from the Records Room in the corners and sets himself up a blank stretch of wall to lay out his maps and evidence. He spends the first two days on assignment hauling things out of boxes and breaking the established cross referencing system to suit his needs. 

He likes a challenge, he says to himself, standing hands on his hips as he stares down the jumbled refuse of an international crime syndicate.

Sasuke takes off his chūnin vest and kicks off his sandals. This is his domain now.

____________

His days are spent scouring reports, tracking Akatsuki sightings through other people’s eyes and words, piecing together a trajectory of good intentions turned sour. It’s not enough to know where they are _now_, he needs to know where they came from. That’s the trap too many people fall into, not knowing the fundamentals of a system, seeing what’s before them and looking no further. That gets them into trouble, loses sight of greater meanings. 

Kakashi-sensei likes the phrase “look underneath the underneath,” but that’s a little pedantic for Sasuke’s tastes. He just knows now that nothing grows without a foundation, and pulling stems won’t weed out the roots.

His nights are spent inside his own head. 

It’s Brother’s turn to make sure Sasuke eats, as he sits and stares across the dinner table, eyes fixed on a blank point on the wall and mind still whirling over Akatsuki’s transition from Ame nin radical pacifist reformers into… something else. There are a hundred reports of individual encounters with Akatsuki teams, but between the Third Shinobi War and now the encounters get increasingly vicious, the apparent missions more bizarre, the motivations more murky until Sasuke finds himself scrambling to figure out _why_ they’re taking the steps they are, and what the ultimate end game is. That’s his job, he knows, this is why he’s been assigned this project: figure out what they’re up to, and where they’re based out of. But it’s _baffling_.

Brother doesn’t interrupt his thought processes, just moves silently around Sasuke, making sure his plate is filled and he’s got water in his glass. Sasuke operates on automatic, eating and barely tasting anything.

____________

Akatsuki is after the jinchūriki.

More specifically, they’re after the beasts themselves.

First he figures it out, second he has to backtrack and prove his sources. It’s infuriating to stumble onto a train of thought that seems to make sense, when he has nothing concrete to prove it, and he reluctantly gives Hound some benefit of the doubt with some of their smaller leaps of logic, because sometimes there’s nothing to it but intuition and a _hunch_. Sasuke knows better than to ignore a gut instinct, but it’s hell to try and provide evidence for it.

How they got here from a political stance of _No More War_ is another leap that Sasuke can’t quite suss out, but adding in Naruto’s disruption in Ame and the bit with Amegakure’s Lady Angel, Sasuke figures a change in leadership set the Akatsuki on a new direction some fifteen to twenty years back. Most recent news out of Ame is that Hanzō the Salamander is gone, has been gone for a while, and the Lady Angel has taken a hard stance against the current iteration of Akatsuki, despite apparently having been close in with them up until Naruto’s interference. Konan, by her given name, is returning to her roots apparently, but Akatsuki continues along without her.

Sasuke hangs his head in his hands, running his fingers through his bangs. He’s hunched over another of Jiraiya’s _Sly Dog_ reports, about heading west to see their Desert Flower before the dawn comes. 

Desert Flower means the Kazekage, Gaara apparently having changed his tune re: murder in the last couple years. Sly Dog predicts that the Akatsuki will go after the Ichibi in eight to nine months. The clay baths at the spa they’re heading towards refer to the Iwa missing nin Deidara, an explosives expert, but Sly Dog says they don’t know if they can “weasel their way in like last time” to know if the clay is any good or not. Possible member of Akatsuki, not confirmed for some reason, and a reference to Itachi? What does that mean? The sake at the spa is too strong, even for Handsome Devil, it’ll make him dance along to someone else’s tune, and he won’t like whose bed he wakes up in. That other genin, the one in black, was a puppet nin, and so is Sasori of the Red Sands, confirmed Akatsuki member. Both are poison experts. Crossing either one seems like a bad idea, for very different reasons.

He tugs on his bangs, like the pain in his scalp will help him figure out the why of anything that’s happening, and then he blinks, because it does.

Sly Dog must be ANBU Hound. Of course they are. They’re both associated with Akatsuki, and the hunt for their leader. One of the sheets in Hound’s sealed file referenced the Ame situation, talked about how without Ame involved, finding the leader would be easier with fewer distractions. 

They’re both _dogs_ and Sasuke can’t believe it’s this obvious. 

He bangs his head on the table a few times in case that shakes any new ideas out.

____________

Kakashi-sensei comes to help once. It’s about as useful as he’d expected it to be.

Sasuke got him to answer one question, about the Akatsuki member with the golden eyes and green hair, the one Sasuke can’t find any documentation on no matter how hard he looked. He _knew_ he existed, he’d seen him in Ame, but there isn’t a Bingo sheet on him in any of the local Bingo Books. He’s started his own sheet to be filed soon enough, but he needs to get Sai to make up the profile image, as Sasuke’s sketches won’t do anybody any good. 

And then Kakashi-sensei, having apparently fulfilled his duty, sat down to take a nap, claiming overwork.

Sasuke can’t keep his eye on the files in front of him. It’s the first time he’s been alone with Kakashi-sensei since he started digging into his family history. His gaze drifts, over and over again, to where his old sensei is hunched, snoozing quietly in the corner, _Icha Icha Blushing_ draped over his face like a bright orange flag of surrender. Actually, now that Sasuke’s thinking about it, he’s probably faking.

“Oi,” Sasuke says, and throws a paperclip like a shuriken at Kakashi-sensei.

He’s not sleeping. 

Kakashi-sensei peels _Icha Icha Blushing_ off his face and lifts his one visible eyebrow at Sasuke, paperclip caught between two fingers. He uses it to mark his page, slumping a little farther to the left in his rickety office chair. It looks desperately uncomfortable, but he’s apparently making it work.

“Can I help you, Sasuke-kun?”

“You knew,” Sasuke starts, and Kakashi-sensei’s eye goes sharp and narrow, because no matter what he’s going to say next, it’s something important. “You know what Shisui did.”

Kakashi-sensei stares at him for a long time. Sasuke doesn’t want to go into any more detail, so he hopes Shisui doesn’t make a habit of any other large-scale village-wide monumental actions. If he does, it doesn’t matter. Kakashi-sensei nods, just a tiny dip of his chin, in silence.

“You helped. I-i— Thank you,” Sasuke says, his voice catching. He clears his throat, feeling like his heart is throbbing where his voicebox should be. “I wanted to thank you for protecting my family.”

Kakashi-sensei props his face in his hand, elbow on the stack of files he’s supposed to be going through. He curls his fingers in front of his mouth, one more shield for a man who is all masks.

“I made a promise,” he says low into hand, his grey eye fixed on Sasuke in the dim room, “To an Uchiha I used to know. Someone I should have saved, but… couldn’t.”

Sasuke bites his tongue until it hurts, and then asks his next question anyway. “Was it the one who gave you your eye?”

Kakashi-sensei hums under his breath. He shakes his head, slowly, and doesn’t look away from Sasuke. “Someone else.” His eye glints.

Sasuke frowns. He knows the Elders are still resentful of the lost Sharingan, no matter how much paperwork Father signed to let Kakashi-sensei have the bloodrite to his eye. Kakashi-sensei doesn’t participate in clan meetings, or associate with other Uchiha much, except for Brother and Sasuke, really.

“Did I know them? Your friend, I mean.”

Kakashi-sensei makes a noise that sounds like it’s supposed to be a laugh. It’s not. “They weren’t my friend,” he says, shaking his head and leaning back. He crosses his arms across his chest. “I treated them poorly, didn’t listen when I should have, so we never got as close as we could have been. Hopefully,” he looks at Sasuke again, eye unblinking, “You’ll never have to know him.”

“Oh,” says Sasuke, his chest feeling tight, like he can’t take a good breath. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Sasuke. I’m glad things worked out this way.”

Sasuke nods, doesn’t know what else to say, and looks down again, finally reading more than the first paragraph in this report about the Mizukage and the suspected interference in the Land of Water’s politicking.

“Why did you think the Akatsuki leader was in the Land of Rivers?”

Kakashi-sensei looks up from his book. 

Sasuke rolls his eye. “If you’re not going to actually tell me what you know, you can just leave. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Uh, apparently,” Kakashi-sensei says, like he didn’t think Sasuke would put it together. Sasuke’s embarrassed at how long it took him, really, it’s a miracle he’s not being mocked for not understanding _sooner_. “I had a hunch?”

With a scowl, Sasuke turns back to his papers. “Your hunches are bad.”

“Sometimes things surprise me, what can I say? We’re all merely human,” Kakashi-sensei says, stretching his legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankle, something almost ironic in his voice. “I had it on good authority that he _had_ been there, I thought it would keep.”

“He’s in the Land of Water.” 

Sasuke stands, crosses to his maps, and pins the reports he’s been double checking up to the areas they reference, an increasingly tight circle around the northernmost of the western islands. Not too close to Kirigakure, not too far from the mainland, but also not the first stop off the coast of the Land of Valleys. 

Movement behind him and Kakashi-sensei steps in at his shoulder, standing way too close, peering at his work.

“These aren’t even my reports,” he says, poking a shipping manifest from a local carpet merchant who had a regular trade with Shimesu, a civilian village outside the domain of the Mizukage. 

“Your reports are bad,” Sasuke says, directing Kakashi-sensei’s attention to Hound’s most recent _whoops, I don’t know, he’s not in Waterfall_ missive that might as well be an image of Kakashi-sensei shrugging. It’s pinned by shuriken where it belongs, above the bin, with other reports that have no corroborating evidence or supporting sources. 

“Huh,” says Kakashi-sensei.

____________

“When are you going to tell me how you come to all these conclusions, sensei?”

“When are you going to tell me more about your eye?”

Sasuke licks teriyaki off his thumb and settles back into his seat, brandishing his chicken skewer. “I already told you everything.”

Kakashi-sensei is still waiting for him to look away to eat his lunch. Sasuke’s trying to see if channelling chakra to his eyes will keep him from needing to blink.

“Everything? Really, _I can’t see some things, and also sometimes I see things that aren’t there_, and that’s it? Nothing else, no reason why, just the mysteries of the Sharingan and nothing to it, huh?”

Sasuke doesn’t mean to turn his gaze down but he can’t help himself. “What else is there?”

The silence sounds very much like _you’re smarter than that_, and Sasuke hates it.

“What am I _supposed_ to say? And don’t change the subject!” he snaps, finally looking back up. There are little sauce stains on Kakashi-sensei’s mask, yakitori vanished.

“I’m really not,” Kakashi-sensei replies, scratching a hand over his chin. 

“It sounds crazy.” Sasuke watches his hands, twisting the skewer again and again between his fingers. Teriyaki drips down in a slow viscous slide. He’s spent plenty of time in his own head thinking he’s mad, thank you very much, he doesn’t much want to hear someone else say it too.

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things. I’d go out on a limb to say I’ve seen weirder than what you’ve got. Besides, therapy is mandatory for ANBU enrollment, so depending on your career prospects, you should get it over with sooner or later.”

“Is that a recent development?”

Kakashi-sensei hums, and picks at the container of salad. He leans over and pushes the cherry tomatoes onto Sasuke’s plate. “Recommended by our very own esteemed medic-nin Godaime Hokage, as a matter of fact.” In recompense, he plucks every single cucumber out of Sasuke’s share. “Increases longevity.”

Sasuke watches him rearrange his salad for a good long moment. Kakashi-sensei very carefully does not watch him back.

“I think they’re dead,” he starts, and then says very quietly, “Fuck,” because he always begins these conversations with the weirdest part. Why can’t he just talk like a normal person?

“Language, Sasuke-kun,” says Kakashi-sensei, like a stodgy old elder. Sasuke’s never yet heard him swear, but he wants that almost as much as he wants to see under his mask. He’ll surprise him into it eventually, is the goal. Naruto would be so proud and _so jealous_.

“I don’t really remember it. I mean, it was a while ago, and I was sick for a while after, but I… I mean, I still have dreams about it.”

Kakashi-sensei is listening intently, ruffling the leaves of his salad. 

“Everyone was dead. Lying in the streets. And there was blood in the dojo. It never got cleaned up, it just dried there, all over the mats. I didn’t dream about that, I remember seeing it. But the… the bodies, I dream about those sometimes.” Sasuke takes a deep breath. He hasn’t even told Brother this much, doesn’t want him to know the things Sasuke has been trying not to think about. “I think I can see what could have happened.”

Kakashi-sensei repeats him quietly, like he’s trying not to startle Sasuke. “What _could have_ happened?”

Sasuke nods, lets his bangs fall across his face. “If Brother had failed, and Danzō had won. If you didn’t… help.”

“What about the other things you see?”

He shrugs. Is it arrogance to say _I think I can see echoes of another world_? Because it certainly feels like it. “I don’t know why though. If I knew why it would make more sense.” 

Kakashi-sensei hums again. He pulls his mask down and starts shoveling salad into his mouth, and Sasuke _knows_ a distraction when he sees one, but he falls out of his chair anyway, ninja skills be damned.

____________

Kakashi-sensei heads off the day after, and Sasuke has to wait for Hound’s report.

When it comes, he puts it up among the other files pinned to the Water hideout, and turns his attention to other possible locations. Akatsuki’s leader has escaped, it’s time to track him down to his next location, and now Sasuke knows what to look for.

Kakashi-sensei’s ANBU team managed to destroy the hideout though, and one Akatsuki members is taken out of commission: Mado, formerly of Kumo, formerly partnered to Hoshigaki. Sasuke saw him, that time in Iwa, but he hadn’t seen his face.

He puts an X through the Bingo page, and starts a new section of wall pinnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *kicks the door down* i’m back babies, and apparently i’ve turned this into a John le Carré spy novel what  
how did this happen
> 
> (if a john le carre spy novel was a comedy of errors starring a 14 yo antisocial magic ninja gremlin)


End file.
